US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to visit Israel this week

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will visit Israel at the end of the week, as Washington maintains its near-weekly shuttle diplomacy of top Biden officials in order to coordinate with Israel on the latter’s war against Hamas, a US and an Israeli official told The Times of Israel, Report informs.

At the top of Sullivan’s agenda will be pushing for an increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has fallen significantly since a truce between Israel and Hamas fell apart on December 1 after seven days, a US official says. Israel insists the bottleneck of aid is not its fault, and that international actors are failing to keep up in the delivery of the amount of assistance that it is approving. The UN and Egypt have said Israel’s bombing campaign is inhibiting efforts to get large amounts of aid into Gaza.

Equally important for Sullivan will be raising ongoing US concerns regarding civilian casualties in Gaza, the US official says.

The visit from US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser will come a week after Vice President Kamala Harris’s national security adviser Phil Gordon and one of his deputies, Ilan Goldenberg, held meetings in Israel and the West Bank with senior Israeli and Palestinian officials.

The week before that, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in town for a similar round of meetings.

The Israeli official who confirmed Sullivan’s visit says Israel expects a senior US delegation to be in town on a near weekly basis for the time being as the war in Gaza remains at the top of Washington’s foreign policy agenda.