US Defense Secretary: Israel Risks Strategic Defeat

If Israel does not do more to avoid civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip or to limit settler violence in the West Bank, the country risks a strategic defeat in its war with the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas. This is what US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says.
Speaking before a defense forum in California on Saturday, Austin harkened back to his experience as a military commander of troops in Iraq. "The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians," he said. "If you drive the civilian population into the arms of the enemy in this kind of fighting, you turn a tactical victory into a strategic defeat."
Before the start of the fighting pause on November 24, almost 14,900 people had been killed in the war in the Gaza Strip, according to the government there. Among them are 6,150 children and 4,000 women. The war that broke out on October 7 has also left some 36,000 people injured, according to Hamas. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have taken place in many world cities.
Austin also reiterated America's call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. “We believe that Israelis and Palestinians must find a way to share the land they both call home,” he said. “It would make this tragedy worse if all that awaited Israelis and Palestinians at the end of this terrible war was more uncertainty, more anger and more despair.”