The United States is growing increasingly frustrated over Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, White House National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said in an interview with ABC.
Jerrymusa.com reports that replying to the host’s question about the growing death toll among civilians, the official said: “I’m glad you brought that timeline up because it shows the degree, the growing degree of frustration that we’ve had with the way these operations are being prosecuted and the way that Israelis are acting on the ground in terms of civilian casualties.”
US May Investigative Israel’s Operation In Gaza
“So we have been increasingly frustrated. And again, that was a core message that the President delivered to Prime Minister Netanyahu in their phone call this past week: that they’ve got to do more; they’ve got to make changes,” he added.
The official noted that the US intends to scrutinise the way Israel’s military campaign is being carried out after an Israeli airstrike killed six workers with the World Central Kitchen and their Palestinian driver in Central Gaza.
Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza-based Palestinian radical group Hamas staged a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City.
In response, Israel has declared a state of war readiness, announced a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, and began delivering air strikes on the enclave and certain parts of Lebanon and Syria, followed by a ground operation in the enclave. Clashes are underway in the West Bank as well.