“Marwan Issa was killed during an Israeli operation last week,” revealed United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at a press conference.
The Israeli Army reported an airstrike “in the center of the Gaza Strip, near Nuseirat”, against an “underground base”, which was “used by two senior leaders of the organization”, including Marwan Issa.
Israel, however, did not confirm the death of the Palestinian fighter, born in 1965, who was an assistant to Mohammed Deif, leader of the Al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
The announcement of the death of the senior Hamas official comes on the day that Jake Sullivan also reported on a conversation between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu.
During the conversation, Netanyahu agreed to send a team to Washington to discuss with the US administration a possible operation in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
According to the White House’s national security advisor, in today’s phone call between the US president and Netanyahu, “a point was reached at which each side made its perspective clear to the other” regarding an Israeli military intervention in Rafah, in the enclave plunged into a serious humanitarian crisis since the start of the conflict between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas, which governs the territory.
Sullivan indicated that the President of the United States believes that a major ground offensive would be “a mistake”, and arranged for an Israeli delegation to travel to Washington to discuss the matter.
After having been Tel Aviv’s closest ally, shortly after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli soil, on October 7, the Biden administration has gradually distanced itself from Netanyahu, and the differences are now public.
Biden’s frustration was evident in a recent interview with MSNBC, in which he stated that Netanyahu was “harming Israel”.
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered on October 7 with an attack on Israeli soil by Hamas, which left 1,163 dead, most of them civilians, and took around 250 hostages, 130 of which remain in captivity in the enclave.
In retaliation, Israel declared a total war to eradicate the Palestinian group, with more than 31,000 people killed in large-scale military operations, mostly women and children, according to local authorities, controlled by Hamas.
The conflict, which threatens to spread to several regions of the Middle East, has also displaced almost two million people, plunging the overpopulated and poor Palestinian enclave into a serious humanitarian crisis.
