The State Department said Sunday that American citizens and their immediate families will have the chance to leave Israel on Monday on chartered flights from Tel Aviv and by sea from Haifa as the conflict between Israel and Hamas intensified over the weekend.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday he isn’t aware whether Americans had been able to leave Gaza as Israel prepares a ground offensive. “We have not been able to get American citizens through the border crossing, and I’m not aware of anyone else being able to get out at this time,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press.
For the U.S., the critical thing is that there are safe places for civilians that won’t be subject to military bombardment, where civilians can be physically safe and be able to get essentials like food, water, medicine, and shelter, Sullivan added.
Sullivan told CBS’s Face the Nation that the U.S. is also working to ensure that the broader civilian population of Gaza can get to safe areas and be protected from the fighting as it intensifies.
Since last week’s attack by Hamas militants, Israel has declared war on Hamas and has bombarded the Gaza Strip with heavy airstrikes, and cut off water, food, medicine, and electricity to the territory. It ordered more than one million Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate. United Nations officials have called that “impossible. ”
Israel said that the attack killed 1,400, and that at least 155 others, including children, were captured by Hamas. The Gaza Health Ministry has said more than 2,670 Palestinians have been killed and 9,600 wounded since the fighting started last weekend.
Israeli Defense Forces Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told ABC’s This Week that the evacuation of northern Gaza is a humanitarian measure to “keep people out of harm’s way so that we can deal with Hamas,” saying that Hamas has established checkpoints trying to keep people from leaving and told people to ignore orders to evacuate. “They have no regard for human life, Israeli or Palestinian.”
Sullivan told CNN’s State of the Union that Israeli officials have said they have turned water supplies back on in southern Gaza, and Israel’s minister of energy and water said that water had been restored at one point in Gaza. But aid workers and others in Gaza said they have not seen evidence that the water was back, the Associated Press reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will return to Israel on Monday, after meeting with seven Arab leaders in six nations in an effort to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spreading to other countries in the Middle East.
On Sunday, he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh and later, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who told him that Israel’s Gaza operation has exceeded “the right of self-defense” and turned into “a collective punishment,” the AP reported, citing Egypt’s state-run media.
Blinken said after meeting with Al Sisi that the U.S. is confident that Egypt’s border crossing with Gaza will be opened to allow humanitarian aid. “We’re putting in place with the United Nations, with Egypt, with Israel a mechanism by which to get assistance in,” he said, adding that U.S. envoy David Satterfield will be in Egypt on Monday to work out the details, Bloomberg reported.
State Department spokesman told reporters that Blinken was returning to Tel Aviv “for further consultations with Israeli officials,” but didn’t offer further details.
Blinken in his meeting with Saudi Prince Mohammed “highlighted the United States’ unwavering focus on halting terrorist attacks by Hamas, securing the release of all hostages, and preventing the conflict from spreading,” the State Department said.
Blinken had planned to go to Israel and Saudi Arabia this week amid ongoing negotiations to normalize relations between the two countries, but moved up his Israel meeting after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Sullivan on Sunday said the U.S. still seeks a peaceful Middle East, but that “for the moment, the focus has to be on helping Israel defend itself against the brutal terrorism of Hamas.”
Elsewhere, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and others were rushed to a shelter in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning amid a rocket attack by Hamas. The senators are in Israel ahead of President Joe Biden’s expected request for Congress to approve wartime funding for Israel, in addition to more aid for Ukraine. “It shows you what Israelis have to go through,” he said on X, formerly Twitter. “We must provide Israel with the support required to defend itself.”
The others on the trip are Sens. Mitt Romney (R., Utah), Bill Cassidy (R., La.), Jacky Rosen (D., Nev.), and Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.).
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C) announced a bipartisan Senate delegation will visit both Israel and Saudi Arabia amid the “drive to peace and normalization” between the two countries.
Write to Janet H. Cho at [email protected]
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