The U.S. embassy warned its ability to assist Americans is “extremely limited even within Kabul” due to deteriorating security and reduced staffing.
The U.S. is deploying 3,000 troops to Afghanistan in order to facilitate the drawdown of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to a “core diplomatic presence,” as Taliban militants rapidly advance toward the Afghan capital.
The troops, which will consist of three infantry battalions total from the Marines and Army, will deploy to Hamid Karzai International Airport within 24 to 48 hours, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
“This is a very narrowly focused mission of safeguarding the orderly reduction of civilian personnel out of Afghanistan,” Kirby told reporters during a press briefing Thursday.
When asked if the troops going to Kabul had a combat mission, Kirby said U.S. forces maintain the right to self defense, but the mission is temporary with a focus on protecting the movement of civilian personnel. Kirby told reporters that the U.S. is still on track to complete its withdrawal by August 31.
In addition, a U.S. infantry brigade will be positioned in Kuwait in the event they are needed in Afghanistan to help secure Hamid Karzai International Airport, according to Kirby.
And a joint unit from the Army and Air Force, consisting of 1,000 personnel, will deploy to Qatar to help process visas for Afghans who helped the U.S., Kirby said.
The decision to deploy additional U.S. troops comes as the Taliban offensive makes rapid advances.
The militants captured the strategic city of Ghazni on Thursday, bringing their front line within 95 miles of Kabul, a staggering development that comes nearly two weeks before U.S. and NATO coalition forces exit.
The Taliban also claims to have captured Afghanistan’s third-largest city, Herat, in the northwest close to Iran. Fierce fighting has also been reported in Kandahar, the nation’s second-largest city.
“In light of the evolving security situation, we expect to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Thursday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani earlier Thursday to coordinate planning, according Price.
President Biden called a reporter a ‘pain in the neck’ Monday in the Oval Office for asking him a question that was off his preferred topic of Iraq.
Sitting in the Oval Office with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, Biden smiled as NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell asked him to comment on Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough’s announcement that front-line VA workers would be required to get a coronavirus vaccine.
“You are such a pain in the neck, but I’m going to answer your question because we’ve known each other for so long,” he said. “It has nothing to do with Iraq … I’ll answer your question. Yes, Veteran Affairs is going to, in fact, require that all doctors working in their facilities are going to have to be vaccinated.”
Biden was genial with O’Donnell, but he has lashed out in the past at reporters over questions he finds unfair or unfounded. Last month, he snapped at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins for a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling her she was in the “wrong business” at one point, and he also had sharp replies on the subject of his son Hunter Biden throughout 2020.
Biden has at times been criticized since he took office for being too scripted and expecting questions to be on his topic of choice. He’s lately been more loose with his words, such as when he had to walk back remarks to reporters that Facebook was “killing people” because it allowed the publication of misleading information about coronavirus vaccines.
One White House reporter anonymously told journalist Julia Ioffe earlier this month that Democrats generally expect the media to take their side and are more “thin-skinned” than Republicans as a result.
KABUL — The United States has launched several airstrikes in support of embattled Afghan forces in recent days, U.S. officials said Friday, an escalation in U.S. involvement in Afghanistan as the Taliban seizes more territory from government forces.
At least four of the strikes were carried out Wednesday and Thursday, including some in Kandahar, which is the birthplace of the Taliban and increasingly under pressure by Taliban forces, said one U.S. official, who, like another U.S. official, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The airstrikes were conducted at the request of Afghan forces under attack by the Taliban or to destroy equipment stolen by the militants, including artillery and vehicles, according to the two U.S. officials.
An Afghan military official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation, said the escalation of U.S. strikes has been “significant” compared to recent months, concentrated in the northern province of Kunduz and in Kandahar.
The Taliban has made rapid territorial gains, including border crossings vital for trade, as the U.S. drawdown nears completion. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday militants had seized about half of the country’s 419 district centers. He told lawmakers last month the Taliban held just 81 district centers.
“Strategic momentum appears to be sort of with the Taliban,” Milley said.
For weeks, the Afghan military has bitterly fought to maintain control of provincial capitals after losing huge swaths of the country’s rural territory, often with little or no resistance. Militants have besieged the capitals by seizing districts nearby, choking off key roads in a bid to deny Afghan troops freedom of movement.
No provincial capitals have fallen, but Milley said the Taliban’s strategy has forced Afghan security forces to abandon some districts and reconsolidate to defend populated cities.
With little fanfare, Bagram Air Base — once the military’s nerve center — was handed over to the Afghans, after nearly 20 years of waging war from the hub.
After a day of rising tensions, which saw a far-right march in Jerusalem and incendiary balloons launched from Gaza, Israel’s new coalition government ordered airstrikes against Hamas.
Naftali Bennett was sworn in as Israel’s new prime minister on Sunday, after winning a confidence vote with the narrowest of margins, just 60 votes to 59. His victory ends a 12-year grip on power by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving leader.
After four elections in two years, Bennett’s incoming government breaks a long political deadlock and ushers in the most diverse coalition Israel has ever seen, including the first Arab party to serve in the government. In his speech before the Knesset confidence vote, Bennett celebrated the diversity and warned of polarization within the country.
“Twice in history, we have lost our national home precisely because the leaders of the generation were not able to sit with one and another and compromise. Each was right, yet with all their being right, they burnt the house down on top of us,” Bennett said. “I am proud of the ability to sit together with people with very different views from my own.”
Bennett became the premier as the leader of Yamina, a right-wing party with only seven seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, making him the only prime minister in the country’s history with such a small faction. By contrast, Netanyahu’s Likud party won 30 seats in March’s election. Once again, however, Netanyahu could not cobble together a governing coalition with a majority of the 120 members of Knesset.
One of Iran’s largest warships caught fire and sank Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman during a “training mission” — as a series of mysterious explosions have targeted commercial vessels in the sensitive region since 2019.
The British-built Kharg, which measured more than 650 feet long, erupted into flames Tuesday off the strategic port of Jask, Reuters reported.
The ship was in “domestic waters” during “a training mission,” said the navy’s head of public relations, Behzad Jahanian, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency.
No further details were given and Jahanian said the cause of the blaze was “still not clear.”
Jerusalem (CNN)Israeli security forces used stun grenades and rubber bullets against Palestinians outside the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, where thousands of worshipers had been attending Friday prayers, puncturing a half-day of calm brought on by a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
A CNN journalist at the mosque compound said dozens of Israeli officers hit journalists with batons and tried to point rifles at them, calling them “liars” when they showed them their press cards.
The officers moved on to the compound as thousands of worshipers chanted in solidarity with Gaza and with Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where some Palestinian families are facing eviction.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Thursday announced a cease-fire to halt an 11-day military operation against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
A statement said his Security Cabinet unilaterally approved the Egyptian-mediated proposal. The two sides were still negotiating exactly when it would take effect. Multiple reports said the truce was to go into effect at 2 a.m., just over three hours after the cabinet’s decision.
“The political leaders emphasized that the reality on the ground will be that which determines the future of the campaign,” the statement said.
The decision came after heavy U.S. pressure to halt the offensive. There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
Since fighting broke out on May 10, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes that it says have targeted Hamas’ infrastructure, including a vast tunnel network. Hamas and other militant groups embedded in residential areas have fired over 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities, with hundreds falling short and most of the rest intercepted.
At least 230 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials, while 12 people in Israel have died
But what prompted the latest escalation of violence?
Roots of the current crisis
Tensions started to brew at the start of Islam’s holy month of Ramadan in mid-April when Israeli police put up barriers at the Damascus Gate on the north side of Jerusalem’s walled Old City, where Muslim worshippers gather after their evening prayers at the Al-Asqa Mosque.
Thousands of Palestinians descended on the area to protest the policy, with dozens hurt in clashes with police and nationalist Israelis that saw crowds hurl firecrackers, stones and other objects while police responded with stun grenades and water cannons.
Elsewhere, in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, tensions were high over a long-running legal case that left four Palestinian families facing eviction from their homes on land claimed by Jewish settlers. The case was set to be heard by Israel’s Supreme Court, although the hearing was postponed as protests grew.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli medics said at least two people were killed and more than 150 injured after a bleacher collapsed at an uncompleted West Bank synagogue on Sunday, the eve of a major Jewish holiday.
The bleacher was packed with ultra-Orthodox worshippers and collapsed during prayers at the beginning of Shavuot. A spokesman for Magen David Adom told Channel 13 that paramedics had treated over 157 people for injuries and pronounced two dead, a man in his 50s and a 12-year-old boy
Rescue workers were on the scene, treating the injured and taking people to the hospital. The collapse comes weeks after 45 ultra-Orthodox Jews were killed in a stampede at a religious festival in northern Israel.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it dispatched medics and other search and rescue troops to assist at the scene. Army helicopters were airlifting the injured.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City flattened three buildings and killed at least 26 people Sunday, medics said, making it the deadliest single attack since heavy fighting broke out between Israel and the territory’s militant Hamas rulers nearly a week ago.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 10 women and eight children were among those killed, with another 50 people wounded in the attack. A rescuer could be seen shouting into a hole in the rubble. “Can you hear me?” he called out. “Are you OK?” Minutes later, first responders managed to pull a survivor out and carried him off on an orange stretcher.
Earlier, the Israeli military said it destroyed the home of Gaza’s top Hamas leader, Yahiyeh Sinwar, in a separate strike in the southern town of Khan Younis. It was the third such attack in the last two days on the homes of senior Hamas leaders, who have gone underground.
Israel appears to have stepped up strikes in recent days to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas as international mediators try to broker a cease-fire. But targeting the group’s leaders could hinder those efforts. A U.S. diplomat is in the region to try to de-escalate tensions, and the U.N. Security Council is set to meet Sunday.
The latest outbreak of violence began in east Jerusalem earlier this month, when Palestinians protested attempts by settlers to forcibly evict a number of Palestinian families from their homes and Israeli police measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a frequent flashpoint located on a mount in the Old City revered by Muslims and Jews. Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem late Monday, triggering the Israeli assault on Gaza.
At least 181 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 52 children and 31 women, with 1,225 wounded. Eight Israelis have been killed, including a 5-year-old boy and a soldier.
The military said Sunday it struck Sinwar’s home and that of his brother Muhammad, another senior Hamas member. On Saturday it destroyed the home of Khalil al-Hayeh, a senior figure in Hamas’ political branch.
Hamas’ upper echelon has gone into hiding in Gaza, and it is unlikely any were at home at the time of the strikes. Hamas’ top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, divides his time between Turkey and Qatar, both of which provide political support to the group.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad militant group have acknowledged 20 fighters killed since the fighting broke out Monday. Israel says the real number is far higher and has released the names and photos of two dozen alleged operatives it says were “eliminated.”
An Egyptian diplomat said Israel’s targeting of Hamas political leaders would complicate cease-fire efforts. The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations, said Cairo is working to broker an end to the fighting. A U.S. diplomat has also been dispatched to the region and the U.N. Security Council is set to meet Sunday.
The Egyptian diplomat said the destruction of Hamas’ rocket capabilities would require a ground invasion that would “inflame the whole region.” Egypt, which made peace with Israel decades ago, has threatened to “suspend” cooperation in various fields, the official said, without elaborating.
Hamas and other militant groups have fired some 2,900 rockets into Israel. The military said 450 of the rockets had fallen short or misfired, while Israeli air defenses intercepted 1,150.
The interception rate appeared to have significantly dropped since the start of the conflict, when Israel said 90% were intercepted. The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israel has meanwhile carried out hundreds of airstrikes across impoverished Gaza, which is home to more than 2 million Palestinians and has been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.
Israel has leveled a number of Gaza City’s tallest office and residential buildings, alleging they contain Hamas military infrastructure. On Saturday, Israel bombed the 12-story al-Jalaa Building, where the office of The Associated Press was located. The building also housed the TV network Al-Jazeera and other media outlets, along with several floors of apartments.
“The campaign will continue as long as it is required,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. He alleged that Hamas military intelligence was operating inside the building.
Israel routinely cites a Hamas presence as a reason for targeting certain locations in airstrikes, including residential buildings. The military also has accused the militant group of using journalists as human shields, but provided no evidence to back up the claims.
The AP has operated from the building for 15 years, including through three previous wars between Israel and Hamas. During those conflicts as well as the current one, the news agency’s cameras from its top floor office and roof terrace offered 24-hour live shots as militants’ rockets arched toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes hammered the city and its surroundings.
“We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building,” AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. “This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”
In the afternoon, the military called the building’s owner and warned a strike would come within an hour. AP staffers and other occupants evacuated safely. Soon after, three missiles hit the building and destroyed it, bringing it crashing down in a giant cloud of dust.
“The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today,” Pruitt said. “We are shocked and horrified.”
He said the AP was seeking information from the Israeli government and was engaged with the U.S. State Department to learn more.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later spoke by phone with Pruitt, offering his support for independent journalists and media organizations, and the White House said it had communicated directly with Israel to urge safety for journalists.
The Biden administration has affirmed its support for Israel while working to de-escalate the crisis. U.S. diplomat Hady Amr is in the region as part of efforts to broker a truce.
___
Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo, Isaac Scharf in Jerusalem and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli air raid in Gaza City killed at least 10 Palestinians, mostly children, early Saturday in the deadliest single strike since the battle with Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers erupted earlier this week. Both sides pressed for an advantage as cease-fire efforts gathered strength.
The latest outburst of violence began in Jerusalem and has spread across the region, with Jewish-Arab clashes and rioting in mixed cities of Israel. There were also widespread Palestinian protests Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot and killed 11 people.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel on Wednesday pressed ahead with a fierce military offensive in the Gaza Strip, killing as many as 10 senior Hamas military figures and toppling a pair of high-rise towers housing Hamas facilities in airstrikes. The Islamic militant group showed no signs of backing down and fired hundreds of rockets at Israeli cities.
In just three days, this latest round of fighting between the bitter enemies has already begun to resemble — and even exceed — a devastating 50-day war in 2014. Like in that previous war, neither side appears to have an exit strategy.
But there are key differences. The fighting has triggered the worst Jewish-Arab violence inside Israel in decades. And looming in the background is an international war crimes investigation.
Tensions between Israel and Palestinians escalated further on Tuesday as Palestinian militants in Gaza fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, which in turn ramped up airstrikes on the coastal enclave, as unrest spread to cities and towns beyond Jerusalem.
Washington (CNN)A US Coast Guard ship fired approximately 30 warning shots as a “large group” of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy fast boats conducted “unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers” near US naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
Six US Navy vessels were escorting a guided missile submarine, the USS Georgia, when they encountered a group of 13 IRGCN “fast attack boats,” Kirby told reporters. The boats approached the US Navy vessels “at high speed,” coming as close as within 150 yards.
After the US tried “all the appropriate and established procedures involving hip blasts, bridge to bridge radio transmission and other ways of communicating,” US Coast Guard Cutter Maui fired approximately 30 warning shots, Kirby said. Following the second round of warning shots, the IRGCN fast boats “broke contact.”
Israel’s army on Monday said it launched airstrikes on Gaza in response to rockets fired by Hamas militants after hundreds of Palestinians were hurt in clashes with Israeli police at a religious site in Jerusalem.
Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters that Israeli forces had targeted “a Hamas military operative,” while Hamas sources in Gaza confirmed to AFP that one of their commanders had been killed.
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned of “huge consequences” of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.
Mrs Clinton told CNN there was a risk the Taliban – the Islamist group ousted in 2001 by the US-led invasion – could retake control.
The US aims to complete the withdrawal by 11 September.
However, the Taliban have been carrying out more attacks.
“This is what we call a wicked problem,” Mrs Clinton told CNN. “There are consequences both foreseen and unintended of staying and of leaving,” she said.
Mrs Clinton, like Mr Biden a Democrat, was a strong supporter of the US intervention in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
The explosion of an oxygen cylinder soon engulfed the whole hospital, including a ward of helpless covid patients.
At least 82 people were killed in the fire which ripped through a Baghdad coronavirus ward, Iraq’s Interior Ministry said Sunday, sparking anger and frustration over the state of the country’s buckling health system.
Another 110 people were wounded in the blaze at Baghdad’s Ibn al-Khatib hospital late Saturday, a ministry official told Iraqi state media.
President Barham Salih described the tragedy as a “wound for the whole nation,” while Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced an investigation into the blaze, declared three days of national mourning and suspended top health officials.
Iraq is in the worst phase of its coronavirus pandemic, averaging around 8,000 new cases daily as the health system struggles to cope. The country’s human rights commission said that 28 of the patients killed in Saturday’s fire had been on life support when the smoke and flames reached their ward.
After five days of struggling to free the Ever Given from where it ran aground, the vessel was partially refloated and, according to shipping officials, close to fully freed.
The giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal was refloated on Monday and is being secured, maritime services company Inchcape said in a Twitter post.
But it remains unclear what the condition of the stranded ship is and when the canal would be open to traffic, with Inchcape saying that “more information will follow once they are known.”
Efforts to free the mega vessel, known as the Ever Given, have lasted for nearly a week. The ship became stuck last Tuesday after running aground while entering the Suez canal from the Red Sea.
Ever Given is one of the largest container ships in the world. It is a 220,000-ton mega ship nearly a quarter-mile long with a 20,000 container capacity.
Efforts to refloat the Ever Given made “significant progress” Friday night, but low tides quashed authorities’ hopes of refloating the 1,300-foot vessel before the weekend.
The Ever Given, which become lodged in the Suez Canal, is still stuck, halting traffic in one of the world’s busiest waterways.
The massive container ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal, halting traffic in one of the world’s busiest waterways, is still stuck.
The ship, called the Ever Given, became horizontally wedged in the waterway following heavy winds.
Nearly 19,000 ships passed through the canal during 2020, for an average of 51.5 per day, according to the Suez Canal Authority.
The massive container ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal, halting traffic in one of the world’s busiest waterways, is still stuck as tug boats continued to try to dislodge the ship on Thursday. A team of expert salvors from Smit Salvage have been called in to assist with the operation.
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed two dozen Dead Sea scroll fragments from a remote cave in the Judean Desert, the first discovery of such Jewish religious texts in more than half a century.
“For the first time in approximately 60 years, archaeological excavations have uncovered fragments of a biblical scroll,” the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement.
More than 20 bits of parchment were found after teams rappelled down an 80-metre cliff and scoured the Cave of Horror, so called due to its precarious position and because 40 skeletons of women, men and children were found there during excavations in the 1960s.
Jewish rebels are believed to have hidden in the canyon south of Jerusalem two millennia ago to escape a Roman advance. The fragments from the Hebrew Bible may have been stashed in the cave during the Bar Kochba Revolt, a Jewish uprising against Roman Emperor Hadrian, between AD132 and AD136.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A pair of B-52 bombers flew over the Mideast on Sunday, the latest such mission in the region aimed at warning Iran amid tensions between Washington and Tehran.
The flight by the two heavy bombers came as a pro-Iran satellite channel based in Beirut broadcast Iranian military drone footage of an Israeli ship hit by a mysterious explosion only days earlier in the Mideast. While the channel sought to say Iran wasn’t involved, Israel has blamed Tehran for what it described as an attack on the vessel.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said the two B-52s flew over the region accompanied by military aircraft from nations including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It marked the fourth-such bomber deployment into the Mideast this year and the second under President Joe Biden.
The US secretary of state seeks to jump start stalled talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has made a blunt new push for a UN-led peace effort in Afghanistan.
In a letter to the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Mr Blinken called for a 90-day reduction in violence and a transitional government formed from both sides.
Mr Blinken also said no decision had been made about whether to stick to a planned US troop withdrawal by 1 May.
He called on President Ghani to show “urgent leadership”.
Mr Blinken’s letter, a copy of which was obtained by the obtained by the BBC on Sunday, reflected the difficult position the US finds itself in as it reviews whether to withdraw its last 2,500 troops.
A deal struck with the Taliban during the Trump administration in February 2020 committed the US to withdrawing by 1 May, but Afghan officials fear the move would create enormous security challenges.
Mr Blinken warned in his letter that the Taliban could make “rapid territorial gains” across the country in a “spring offensive”.
Western security sources told AFP the rockets were Iranian-made Arash models, which are 122mm artillery rockets and heavier than those seen in similar attacks.
“One civilian contractor died of a heart attack during the attack,” a high-level security source told AFP, adding that he could not confirm the contractor’s nationality.
The death marks the third fatality in rocket attacks in recent weeks, after rockets targeting US-led troops in the Kurdish regional capital of Erbil left two people dead.
Days later, more rockets hit a US military contracting company working north of the capital and the US embassy in Baghdad, but only injuries were reported.
Washington (CNN)The US intelligence report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi says that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman approved the operation to capture or kill the Saudi journalist.
“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the report’s executive summary states.
“We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decision-making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi,” the report says.
The U.S. military carried out an airstrike against an Iranian-backed militia stronghold in Syria Thursday, a senior official told Fox News.
In the first known military action by President Biden, multiple facilities were struck by American F15 fighter jets that targeted Iraqi border-based Shia militia groups, Kait’ib Hezbollah and Kait’ib Sayyid al Shuhada.
Both forces are suspected of having received funding and military support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
The senior official said the strike was “shot across the bow” and a defensive strategy, intended to deter Iran and its militia from launching rockets at U.S. forces in the region, like the recent attacks in Iraq.
The Defense Department later confirmed the strikes.
The decision of an International Criminal Court panel to clear the way for a potential war crimes investigation of Israel is forcing the Biden administration to wade into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict much earlier than anticipated.
Why it matters: The ICC ruling infuriated the Israeli government — and it also underscored their reliance on the Biden administration, senior Israeli officials tell me. After the decision was announced on Friday, Israel immediately opened urgent consultations with U.S. officials.
On Monday morning, the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Jerusalem met Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi to discuss the matter.
Hours later, Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke with Ashkenazi and reassured him the U.S. would help Israel oppose the ICC ruling, Israeli officials tell me.
The big picture: Unlike the Obama and Trump administrations, the Biden administration doesn’t see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a foreign policy priority and has little expectation of progress.
On CNN on Monday, Blinken summed up President Biden’s initial approach to the issue as “do no harm” — to ensure that neither side takes unilateral steps that would further obstruct a path toward peace.
Biden doesn’t think there’s a realistic chance of renewing negotiations between the parties anytime soon and therefore isn’t planning to appoint a special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
But just three weeks into Biden’s term, Israeli officials are warning of a deep crisis in Israeli-Palestinian relations if the ICC prosecutor takes up the war crimes investigation, which was initially requested by the Palestinian government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now desperately needs Biden’s backing on an issue of acute importance to Israel.
The State Department has already disputed the ICC’s decision that it has jurisdiction to investigate the matter.
The Israeli government is now hoping the Biden administration will pressure the court’s member states and the prosecutor not to pursue the probe.
What to watch: That reliance could give the U.S. leverage when it seeks to deter the Israeli government from taking provocative steps like further settlement building, or it could gain Israeli approval for the reopening of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem.
But the ICC ruling could also complicate the Biden administration’s efforts to renew ties with the Palestinians — in particular, the plan to reopen the PLO office in Washington, which the Trump administration closed in 2018.
An existing U.S. law requires the secretary of state to certify to Congress that the Palestinian Authority is not pursuing action against Israel in the ICC in order for the PLO to be permitted to have an office in Washington.
The state of play: Palestinian leaders have welcomed the ICC ruling and called for an investigation as soon as possible. It’s unclear whether the Biden administration has had any talks with Palestinian officials on the issue.
Barak Ravid is a Contributing Correspondent at Axios based in Tel-Aviv. He covers everything that matters from Cairo to Tehran. Barak also writes for Walla News in Israel.
