Israel-Hamas War: White House Issues Rare Criticism of Israeli Minister Who Opposes Cease-Fire

The statement came a day after Mr. Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar declared that “the time has come” for Israel and Hamas to finalize a cease-fire agreement that would free Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a halt to the war and the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel agreed to send a delegation back to the talks next Thursday, Mr. Smotrich called it “a dangerous trap” that Israel should not fall into and objected to equating hostages with convicted prisoners.

“It is definitely not the time for a surrender deal that would stop the war before the destruction of the Nazis of Hamas-ISIS, enabling them to regroup and return to murdering Jews again,” Mr. Smotrich said on Friday. Mr. Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister and a far-right ally, have threatened to quit Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition if he signs a deal ending the war.

The Biden administration’s pushback was striking because rarely does a White House spokesman go after a minister from another country so directly and by name in an official briefing. That it came in a planned statement that Mr. Kirby volunteered without prompting, rather than in response to a reporter’s question, indicated how much Mr. Smotrich’s opposition to a cease-fire has irritated the White House.

The reproach of Mr. Smotrich was clearly a warning to Mr. Netanyahu not to cave into pressure from the right wing of his governing coalition at the cost of an agreement that could ultimately lead to an end to the war. But whether it could help Mr. Netanyahu to have the Americans weigh in on his domestic politics was not as clear.

Mr. Kirby expressed particular umbrage that Mr. Smotrich had suggested that Mr. Biden was forcing Israel to sign a surrender agreement at a time when the president had ordered more warships and aircraft to the region to defend Israel in case of an anticipated attack by Iran in the coming days.

“The idea that he would support a deal that leaves Israel’s security at risk is just factually wrong,” Mr. Kirby said of the president. “It’s outrageous. It’s absurd. And anybody who knows President Biden and how staunchly he’s been a defender for Israel for the entirety of his public service ought to be ashamed for thinking anything different.”

“Simply put,” he added, “the views being taken against this agreement, the views expressed by Mr. Smotrich specifically would in fact sacrifice the lives of Israeli hostages, his own countrymen and American hostages as well.”

Mr. Kirby added that Mr. Biden would not be deterred. “He won’t allow extremists to blow things off course — including extremists in Israel making these ridiculous charges against the deal,” he said.

But Israel took sufficient action to meet the Leahy Law’s criteria for “remediation,” in the form of justice and accountability, to make the unit eligible for continued American assistance, the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said in a statement on Friday. The statement did not specifically name Netzah Yehuda, but officials have said it was the only Israeli unit under such scrutiny.

After spending months evaluating information provided by Israel’s government, Mr. Miller said, the department found that the unit’s violations — which occurred in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the current war with Hamas in Gaza — had “been effectively remediated.” It added: “Consistent with the Leahy process, this unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America.”

A U.S. official said that Israel had provided the Biden administration with information showing that two soldiers who Israeli military prosecutors said should be disciplined had left the Israeli military and were ineligible to serve in the reserves.

The official also said that the Israel Defense Forces had taken other steps to prevent further offenses, including enhanced screening for new recruits and the implementation of a two-week educational seminar for such recruits.

Netzah Yehuda, created to accommodate the religious practices of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, has been repeatedly accused of mistreating Palestinians. The charges against the unit include binding and gagging a 78-year-old Palestinian American who died of a heart attack while in military custody in January 2022.

The unit was transferred in 2022 from the West Bank to the Golan Heights in northern Israel, according to an April letter on the matter that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sent to the House Speaker, Mike Johnson.

That letter revealed that the State Department had found that two other units with the Israel Defense Forces and two civilian authority units had committed gross human rights violations, but that Israel had also taken adequate remedial steps in response to those cases.

The State Department notified Congress this week of its intent to disburse $3.5 billion in new military aid to Israel from a supplemental budget bill approved earlier, the department said in a statement. The disbursement was expected to go forward in 15 days. Israel is expected use the money to purchase arms from the U.S. government or from American companies.

Edward Wong contributed reporting.

Under a blazing sun, women carrying babies and blankets, men pushing carts and wheelchairs over the sandy road and young children carrying suitcases and backpacks have walked away from homes and shelters and toward unknown destinations. Some were in tears.

“Death is better,” an older woman said on Thursday in video footage from the Reuters news agency. “We’re fed up. We’ve already died. We’re dead.”

The Israeli military has said its 10-month war in Gaza — which has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gazan Health Ministry, and has destroyed large swathes of the territory — is aimed at destroying Hamas after the Palestinian armed group led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The Israeli military said it had launched an offensive on parts of Khan Younis as Hamas tried to regroup, and it again ordered an evacuation on Thursday as it began its offensive.

Israel has already carried out multiple ground invasions into Khan Younis, leaving large parts of the city — once a lush area where many residents lived off the fruits and vegetables they grew — unrecognizable to its residents.

Much of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million have been on the run throughout the war, chased from neighborhood to neighborhood and city to city by Israel’s ever-changing military offensives. With the borders closed, most Gazans can’t leave the enclave.

“This is the 14th time we are displaced since the beginning of the war,” Rami Zaki Al-Qara, 42, and a father of four, told The Times by voice message.

Mr. Al-Qara said that packing up his extended family of 40 people over and over to find safety was exhausting and draining him of hope.

“During each displacement, we wish for death at every moment because there is no life in constantly having to take the tent and move it from place to place,” he said.

Mr. Al-Qara and his family have had to leave behind more belongings with each displacement. Finding transportation has become more difficult as the war drags on, so they often leave with only the things they can carry. Sometimes they’ve had to flee under Israeli bombardment, forcing them to abandon items like clothing and pots and pans.

Mr. Al-Qara says he knows that this displacement most likely won’t be the last.

“Based on what we have witnessed, the Israeli are liars,” he said, noting that even the places designated as safe by Israel often come under attack.

The United Nations and other rights organizations have criticized Israel for attacking areas that its own military has designated as safe. Israel argues that Hamas hides among civilians in the territory, using them as shields in populated areas.

Mr. Al-Qara sees only the thousands of people without homes who are forced to wander from one destroyed area to another.

“They cause hundreds of thousands of people to be displaced,” he said of Israel. “And, still, now we see the rocket as it falls and wish it would fall on us.”

There are risks to such a high-profile ultimatum. While the renewed urgency presented the opportunity for a breakthrough, substantial issues remained to be worked out, an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.

And if the cease-fire talks falter at such a tense moment, that could substantially raise the chance of escalation, said Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israeli intelligence officer and fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Mr. Citrinowicz said the United States and its allies were probably seeking to limit the attack by Iran and Hezbollah by dangling the carrot of a potential truce in Gaza. After the retaliatory strikes, the Biden administration would then pressure Israel not to respond with overwhelming force, he said.

“They could then turn the page on this event and focus on the Aug. 15 meeting with the hope of putting something on the table that could bring all sides to an agreement,” he said. “That’s the hope — but will it work? There are a lot of variables.”

“If you build up hype around this event and it fails, the path to regional war becomes much shorter,” he added.

Iran might be interested in a path to de-escalation, but the killing of Fuad Shukr — one of Hezbollah’s most senior figures — has infuriated the Lebanese armed group, meaning its leaders would probably feel the need to launch an aggressive assault, Mr. Citrinowicz said.

The United States was moving military firepower into the Middle East, one senior Biden administration official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to comply with protocol. A major attack on Israel would seriously jeopardize a potential cease-fire deal in Gaza and lead to serious consequences for Iran, he added.

At the same time, Mr. Netanyahu faces a difficult political calculation. His government relies on far-right political leaders who hope to rule Gaza indefinitely and build Israeli settlements there. They have generally ruled out a permanent truce with Hamas and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s hard-line finance minister, called the proposed cease-fire “surrender terms” on Friday, adding that it would mean that “all the blood we shed in this most just of wars was in vain.” He called on Mr. Netanyahu “not to fall into this trap.”

Israel and Hamas have been negotiating on and off for months on the basis of a three-stage cease-fire proposal backed by the Biden administration and the United Nations Security Council. Over the next week, officials will hold preparatory conversations in an attempt to minimize the gaps in advance of the summit, according to the Israeli official and the senior Biden administration official.

Sticking points between the two sides include the future control of the Gazan side of its border with Egypt and the identities and numbers of Palestinian prisoners to be freed in exchange for the remaining 115 hostages held in Gaza. Hamas and Israel have also been at an impasse over how Israeli forces will withdraw from key parts of Gaza and the transition from a short-term truce to a permanent cease-fire.

“The time has come” for an agreement, the leaders said in a joint statement, the latest push for peace talks amid concerns that the conflict will engulf more of the region.

Before the attack, the Israeli military ordered thousands of Palestinians to leave the area, again displacing people who have repeatedly moved across the 140-square-mile territory in search of elusive safety, with no end to the war in sight.

Photos and videos from Gaza on Thursday showed streams of people trudging through piles of rubble, carrying bedding and bags, to leave the evacuation areas in anticipation of the attack.

The Israeli military said its coordinated attack had struck “more than 30 terrorist targets” and that it had killed several militants. Israel said it had ordered the evacuation to protect the safety of civilians living in the areas, from which some rockets had been fired at Israeli territory.

It is at least the third time that Israeli soldiers have launched a major operation around Khan Younis. The Israeli military withdrew in April after fighting there for about four months, destroying large swaths of the city. Some residents went home and began laboriously clearing rubble from the streets — only to flee again in the face of the new operations.

Elsewhere in Gaza, at least 16 people were killed in airstrikes on Thursday on two school complexes in the northern part of the enclave. Schools in Gaza have been closed since the war began 10 months ago, but displaced people have crowded into the buildings, seeking safety.

Israel’s military said that the strikes had been intended to destroy Hamas “command-and-control centers” inside the compounds and that measures had been taken to protect civilians. Israeli officials have blamed Hamas for hiding among displaced people, while rights groups have said Israel must do more to protect civilians.

Earlier in the week, the United Nations Human Rights Office expressed “horror” over what it called an “escalating pattern” of attacks in the past month on schools turned into shelters.