WASHINGTON – Monday’s virtual meeting between the U.S. and the U.S Israeli officials To discuss Israel’s plans for a ground invasion of Rafah in Gaza, the dispute escalated after the Americans withdrew an Israeli offer to evacuate Palestinian civilians sheltering there, two U.S. officials and a former U.S. official familiar with the meeting said.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer began shouting and waving his arms as he defended the plan. American officials present at the meeting, including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, remained calm and did not respond in kind.
Israel Officials said they have presented a plan to move 1.4 million civilians from Rafah to tents north of the city within weeks. But Israel’s proposal did not include plans to address sanitation needs or an estimate of how much food or water would be needed or where it would come from, officials said. They said Israeli officials intended to buy only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of tents that would be needed.
When U.S. officials said they didn’t see the idea as realistic, Israeli officials bristled, one former and two U.S. officials said. Two administration officials noted and described it as long routine for Dermer to become animated during meetings with U.S. officials. This meeting is no more controversial than other recent talks between the two governments. One official said the meeting was productive and was not intended to present detailed plans, but to start a process for the US and Israel to hold a series of discussions about ways forward in Israel’s war against Hamas.
Two current officials and one former official said the Israelis were not providing many specifics about the actual ground occupation of Rafah. These plans are expected to be discussed in more detail at another meeting between US and Israeli officials next week.
After this article was originally published, an Israeli official who attended the meeting said NBC News’ description “is a distortion of what happened in the room. The meeting was constructive and respectful even in times of disagreement. There was no shouting anywhere.”
A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment. After Monday’s meeting, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “The whole reason for this meeting is to talk about our concerns about the major ground operation in Rafah and to present viable alternatives.” [the Israelis] to be more precise and more targeted”.
In addition to Sullivan and Blinken, more than seven senior officials from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon participated in the virtual meeting. The Israeli contingent included Dermer and Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi.
The meeting was called after the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu He canceled a one-on-one meeting with President Joe Biden that his team had agreed to hold in Washington, an attempt by Netanyahu to show his displeasure with the US decision to abstain rather than veto the war resolution. Gaza at the United Nations Security Council.