CNN….
The US continues to believe Israel should not target hospitals in Gaza from the air and that civilians should be protected from the crossfire, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said, as Israel continues its raid on the enclave’s largest medical facility.
Kirby said the US did not sign off on the specific operation around Al-Shifa Hospital nor does it approve any of Israel’s military plans.
“We did not give an OK to their military operations around the hospital, in similar fashion to the fact that we don’t give OKs to their other tactical operations,” Kirby said. “These are Israeli military operations that they plan and they execute on, you know, in accordance with their own established procedures that the United States is not involved in.”
He said he would “refrain … from providing a running commentary on what is an ongoing operation.”
He repeated his assertion from a day earlier that the US doesn’t “want to see hospitals attacked from the air” or to “see innocent civilians, patients, medical staff become victims of crossfire between Hamas and Israeli Defense Forces.”
He said the operation around Al-Shifa was “not a focus” of President Joe Biden’s phone call Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Kirby also said the decision Tuesday to unveil downgraded intelligence about Hamas’ use of the Al-Shifa Hospital as a command node was unrelated to Israel’s forthcoming operation.
“My delivery of some downgraded information yesterday, the timing of that really came after work by the intelligence community to prepare that information for downgrade, and it had nothing to do with any operational timing or any decision making by the Israeli Defense Forces,” he said.
CNN cannot independently verify Israel’s claims that Hamas is operating from the hospital….
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Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed on Tuesday that Hamas has lost control in northern Gaza, including in Gaza City.
“You’ve seen Golani troops sitting in Gaza’s Parliament. This is significant. I can tell you that in the northern Gaza Strip Hamas has lost control. In fact, we are in control of the entire area above and below ground in the northern Gaza Strip, and especially in Gaza City,” Gallant said at a news conference, referring to the IDF’s Golani Brigade.
“We’re in the second stage of the war in Gaza. In the first stage, we struck with full force, and in the second stage, over the last two weeks, we’ve been operating with multiple forces inside Gaza City. We breached the defensive lines and the barricades from the north and the south,” he added.
Ground operations will continue, the defense minister said, and the Israeli army will “keep advancing, both today and over the next days, in order to fulfill the tasks in accordance with the cabinet’s directives.”….
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*The Hill….
A Majority of American’s want a Hamas/Israeli ceasefire…..
A majority of Americans now back a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, though the Biden administration has strongly spoken against such a move, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Wednesday.
Poll respondents showed less support for Israel than at the start of the conflict, showing changing opinions as the war reaches its sixth week. About 32 percent of respondents said the U.S. should support Israel, down from 41 percent in mid-October, days after the start of the war.