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    New York: more than 100 arrested after Israel-Hamas war protest blocks traffic

    New York City police arrested more than 130 anti-war protesters after hundreds of people blocked traffic on Fifth Avenue on Friday night.A crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict and marched in the rain from Bryant Park to the Midtown Manhattan office of the New York US senator Kirsten Gillibrand.“Senator Gillibrand, we will not stop until you call for a ceasefire,” a crowd, led by the New York state assemblymember Zohran Kwame Mamdani, chanted in front of her office.The demonstration was co-organized by the Democratic Socialists of America and other activist groups. Throughout the night, protesters called for a ceasefire and denounced the murder of Israelis and Palestinians.“Unfortunately, our political leaders seem to keep failing to learn that lesson again and again that war is not the answer,” Jeremy Cohan, a co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, told local news station WABC.About 8pm local time, a crowd of police officers gathered around the rows of demonstrators blocking traffic and began making arrests. Protesters on the sidewalks shouted “shame on you!” at the officers. Those arrested were handcuffed, transported on white buses and issued summonses to appear in court.In a statement, the New York police department (NYPD) said a total of 137 people were taken into custody by officers on the scene.The arrests are the latest this week after mass protests against the Israel-Hamas war. On Wednesday, more than 300 demonstrators at the US Capitol were arrested by police after gathering inside the building. Participants in an earlier demonstration at the White House also were arrested.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeeting with the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, Joe Biden vowed to provide Israel with security needs, at the same time appealing to Netanyahu that Israel not be “consumed” by its rage against Hamas. On Friday, the president submitted a $106bn request for Congress for military and humanitarian aid for Israel and Ukraine, along with humanitarian assistance for Gaza.Congress will not be able to approve the aid request until a new speaker for the US House is chosen. Selecting a speaker is a conflict among House Republicans that has been ongoing for weeks. More

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    Former US congressman says family members killed in Gaza church blast

    The first Palestinian American to serve as a US Congress member said he was grieving after several of his relatives were killed at a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza that authorities report was hit by an Israeli airstrike.Justin Amash detailed his sorrow over losing family members amid the Israel-Hamas war in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.“I was really worried about this. With great sadness, I have now confirmed that several of my relatives … were killed at Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza, where they had been sheltering, when part of the complex was destroyed as the result of an Israeli airstrike,” Amash wrote in a post that pictured whom he identified as two lost family members, Viola and Yara.The ex-congressman’s post continued: “Give rest, O Lord, to their souls, and may their memories be eternal. The Palestinian Christian community has endured so much. Our family is hurting badly. May God watch over all Christians in Gaza – and all Israelis and Palestinians who are suffering, whatever their religion or creed.”Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Amash has previously said his father was a Palestinian Christian who lived in Ramla until his family was forced out during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948.The 43-year-old Amash served as a US House representative for Michigan from 2011 to 2021. He was elected as a Republican but declared himself an independent in 2019 after supporting the first impeachment of the party’s leader, then president Donald Trump.Amash was the first and only Palestinian American in Congress until Rashida Tlaib joined the US House in 2019. Tlaib, a fellow Michigander and progressive Democrat, became the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress.On Thursday evening, hundreds of Christians and Muslims were sheltering inside Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City when a missile took down part of the church, killing at least 16 people. The bodies of those killed – including four small children – were wrapped in white sheets and laid out in the church courtyard Friday for a mass funeral.The church authority that runs Saint Porphyrius, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said many of those inside at the time of the missile strike were women and children. The patriarchate also accused Israel of targeting churches, which it condemned.Israel’s military said in response it had damaged “a wall of a church” while hitting a Hamas “command and control center” nearby, but it denied deliberately targeting Saint Porphyrius.Saint Porphyrius is less than 300 meters (nearly 1,000ft) from the al-Ahli hospital compound where an explosion on Tuesday killed and injured hundreds of people who had fled there to escape Israeli airstrikes.Israel has blamed the hospital explosion on a failed Palestinian rocket, an assessment that has received US and French backing. Hamas blamed an Israeli missile.The US estimated between 100 and 300 people died in the hospital courtyard. Hamas-controlled local authorities have said the death toll was nearly 500.Amash’s lamentation over his late relatives was one of two statements he made on Friday about the war that Israel launched in retaliation for the 7 October attack by Hamas, in which 1,400 were killed as they overran military posts, murdered civilians in their homes and took nearly 200 hostages.He also commented on Hamas’s release on Friday of two American hostages.“This is fantastic news,” he wrote. But Amash also said Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad “need to unconditionally release all hostages of every nationality”. More

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    Protesters calling for ceasefire in Israel-Hamas war arrested in US Capitol building – video

    Protesters rallied in Washington DC, calling on the Biden administration and Congress to press for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. About 200 demonstrators, many from the group Jewish Voice for Peace, filled the rotunda of the Cannon House office building on Capitol Hill and staged a sit-in, calling for an end to the bombing and to ‘let Gaza live’. A number of arrests were made by US Capitol police, who handcuffed protesters and escorted them out of the building More

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    Trump vows to expand Muslim ban and bar Gaza refugees if he wins presidency

    Doubling down on the hardline immigration policies that have long animated his base, Donald Trump on Monday vowed to bar refugees from Gaza and immediately expand his first-term Muslim travel ban if he wins a second term following the deadly attack on Israel last week.Speaking to supporters in Iowa, the former president said that if he returns to the Oval Office, he will immediately begin “ideological screening” for all immigrants and bar those who sympathize with Hamas and Muslim extremists. The war between Israel and Hamas has sparked what is now the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides, with more than 4,000 dead.Though Trump’s audience in the Horizon Events Center in Clive cheered his proposals, 31-year-old information technology specialist Ritu Bansal said she supported Trump but hoped he would also show compassion for the people of Gaza.“In my opinion the US government should care for the victims of the Hamas attack on Israel and the civilian victims in Gaza,” Bansal said. “The US can care for both.”Trump’s proposals would mark a dramatic expansion of the controversial – and legally dubious – policies that drew alarm from immigrant rights and civil liberties activists, but helped him win the presidency in 2016.Trump has long railed against the US taking immigrants from countries he has called inferior, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, and told the crowd Monday that while he was president the US stood up for Israel and “Judeo-Christian civilization and values”.Trump also continued to paint himself as a martyr for his loyal supporters, railing against the four indictments he is facing along with a narrow gag order that was imposed Monday by the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference case against him in Washington. The order, which Trump has pledged to appeal, bars him from making statements targeting prosecutors, possible witnesses and court staff.“I am willing to go to jail if that’s what it takes for our country to become a democracy again,” he said in Clive.Trump pledged to bar the entry of refugees from Gaza fleeing Israel’s retaliatory strikes after the surprise 7 October attack, just as he tried to bar citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries during his first term with an executive order. The executive order, however, was met with fierce opposition and was fought all the way to the US supreme court. The high court eventually upheld a third version of the ban, which included travelers from North Korea and some from Venezuela.Current and former members of communist and totalitarian parties and their sympathizers are already banned from entry into the US. But Trump told about 1,500 people in suburban Des Moines that if he wins a second term, the US would no longer allow what he called “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs to get residency in our country”.“If you empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified,” he said. “If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified. If you support Hamas or any ideology that’s having to do with that or any of the other really sick thoughts that go through people’s minds – very dangerous thoughts – you’re disqualified.”The ex-president and 2024 Republican frontrunner also said he would aggressively deport resident aliens with “jihadist sympathies” and send immigration agents to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” to identify violators.“In the wake of the attacks on Israel, Americans have been disgusted to see the open support for terrorists among the legions of foreign nationals on college campuses. They’re teaching your children hate,” he said. “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities and we will send them straight back home.” More

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    Jewish groups rally at White House urging Biden to push for Gaza ceasefire

    Leftwing US Jewish groups gathered outside the White House on Monday to urge the Biden administration to pressure Israel into dropping its plans for a military invasion of Gaza and instead declare an immediate ceasefire.Accusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of planning “genocide”, several hundred volunteers from campaign groups IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace chanted slogans, carried placards and sang ancient Jewish songs in protest of what they said was an immoral response to the deadly assault on 7 October by the Palestinian group Hamas that killed at least 1,400 Israelis.At least 30 people were arrested during the protest, according to reports from ABCNews. One organiser, identifying himself only as Yotam, told demonstrators shortly before they departed an initial rallying point at Farragut Square for the White House that 150 activists had volunteered to be arrested if security personnel ordered them to vacate the entrance points.The demonstrators also trained their sights on Joe Biden, who they said was complicit in an Israeli retaliatory bombardment that had destroyed Gaza neighbourhoods, cut off water and electricity, and left around 2,200 Palestinians dead, including 700 children.The criticism of the US president came as he was considering an offer by the Israeli prime minister to visit Israel as it grieves in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks. Biden has offered unequivocal support for the country since it was attacked, but cautioned that a re-occupation of Gaza – from which Israel formally withdrew in 2005 – would be a mistake.Monday’s demonstration came as Gaza faced an intensifying humanitarian crisis as more than half a million people fled their homes in the north of the tiny coastal enclave in advance of preparations for an apparent Israeli ground invasion with the stated goal of destroying Hamas.Standing outside the White House gates, Eva Borgwardt, political director of IfNotNow, demanded an urgent meeting with Biden. “The stakes are life or death,” she said.“We are here to tell President Biden, as the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world he needs to do everything in his power to demand a ceasefire, to demand a de-escalation, to release the Israeli hostages and to address the underlying circumstances that have led us into this nightmare.”Protest organisers said they were prepared to engage in civil disobedience to influence US policy, including blocking entrances to and from the White House.Holding placards bearing slogans including “My grief is not your weapon” and “Stop genocide in Gaza”, they said their focus was in ending US support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and what they described as the Jewish state’s “system of apartheid”.Several described Israeli rhetoric towards Palestinians in the wake of the Hamas attacks as explicitly genocidal.Some attendees waved Palestinian flags, while others carried “Free Palestine” placards. Some of those present wore Jewish kippas, or skull caps.For all the focus on Israel’s policy, there was little reference to or direct criticism of Hamas for its attack on Israeli towns and communities that has triggered the latest crisis in the decades-old dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionInstead, activists put the focus on the Biden administration’s sale of expensive military equipment to Israel.Omas Baddar, a Palestinian American analyst, said the White House was guilty of hypocrisy for condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while appearing to condone Israel’s actions.“When you compare the rhetoric of this administration, talking about being a human rights-first foreign policy administration, about the need to put an end to the violence that has taken place in Russia’s war with Ukraine and you contrast it with its rhetoric on what is happening with Israel and Palestine today, it is nothing short of a level of hypocrisy that deserves to be called out as aggressively as we possibly can,” he said.Borgwardt said the demonstration was evidence that the Jewish left was coalescing into a movement aimed at “throwing itself into [Israel’s] war machine” and stopping the onslaught on Gaza.However, some of those present acknowledged that wider support among the Jewish community is hard to come by.“I have a conflict with my family. I believe in a bi-national state,” said Sami Gold, 19, a political science and history student at George Washington University in Washington DC, who said his mother was Israeli-born. “Jews have been discriminated against for thousands of years and if there was a way of forming a Jewish state without discriminating against other people, I would be all for it. But we don’t live in that world.“My family still loves me, but they are sad that this is what I believe. But I think they are going to become more and more sympathetic to what I believe in.” More

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    Progressive Democrats bring resolution calling for ceasefire in Israel-Hamas war

    A group of prominent progressive US lawmakers introduced a resolution on Monday calling for a ceasefire in the fast-escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas that has resulted in a death toll in the thousands, as fears grow that the war could spiral into a wider regional conflict.The two-page resolution, brought by 13 Democratic members of Congress, urges the Biden administration to “immediately call for and facilitate de-escalation and a ceasefire to urgently end the current violence” as well as to “promptly send and facilitate the entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza”.“We all know collective punishment of millions of Palestinians is a war crime. No one – no one – can deny that,” said the congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American member of the House on a Monday press call. “The answer to war crimes can never be answered with more war crimes.”Tlaib, her voice shaking with emotion, said Palestinians, including American citizens trapped in Gaza, feel “abandoned by the world”.“Please turn on the TV,” she said. “See what’s happening. Don’t turn away.”Tlaib and others, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, introduced the resolution as Israel prepared a likely ground offensive into Gaza amid the crisis.The calls for a ceasefire are notable in Washington, where policymakers have rushed to express unwavering support for Israel following the shocking Hamas attacks. So far, only a handful of mostly progressive Democratic lawmakers have called for a de-escalation of violence, while most Democrats, adopting the posture of the Biden administration, have pledged unconditional solidarity.A leaked state department memo published by HuffPost warned US diplomats against using phrases such as “de-escalation/ceasefire” as the words did not align with current US policy.Joe Biden declared that Israel not only has a right to respond but a “duty” to do so. But as Israel masses troops around Gaza’s borders, the president has also begun to press for restraint. In an interview with CBS’s 60 minutes, Biden warned that it would be a “big mistake” for Israel to try to reoccupy the territory once more with ground troops.On Monday, Biden postponed a planned trip to Colorado to stay in Washington DC and focus on the conflict as he reportedly weighs an invitation to visit Israel in what would be an extraordinary show of support for one of the US’s closest allies.Meanwhile, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, was dispatched on a faltering diplomatic mission across the Middle East to try to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and keep the conflict from widening into a regional war.In Washington DC, the Democratic lawmakers face an uphill climb to pass their resolution in the Republican-controlled House, which is presently without a speaker and therefore unable to conduct normal business. Republicans are under pressure to quickly fill the speakership vacancy, after a handful of far-right conservatives ousted the previous occupant, in part so that Congress can respond to the widening crisis in the Middle East.There is a broad bipartisan consensus in Congress for aiding Israel’s war effort. A separate bipartisan resolution declaring that Congress “stands ready to assist Israel with emergency resupply and other security, diplomatic and intelligence support” in its “brutal” and “unprovoked” war against Hamas has 381 sponsors.But as the conflict grinds on, and the death toll rises, Tlaib said she expects more members will join their call for a ceasefire. Though the overwhelming majority of the House Democratic caucus has not yet joined calls for a ceasefire, Tlaib told reporters that party leaders did not try to dissuade her or her allies from introducing the resolution.“We’ve been clear on the need for de-escalation and a ceasefire since the attacks,” Bush said. “Leadership and the White House know exactly where we stand: there is no military solution to this conflict.”Earlier calls by progressive Democrats for a de-escalation of violence infuriated colleagues of both parties who pledged unflinching support for Israel in the wake of the unprecedented terror attack that many likened to the nation’s “own 9/11”.“Calls for de-escalation, even if well-meaning, are premature”, the congressman Jake Auchincloss, a Massachusetts Democrat who is Jewish, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, last week. “Israel needs the military latitude to re-establish deterrence and root out the nodes of terrorism. Israel did not ask America to de-escalate on September 12, 2001.”The rift underscored a shift in attitude among Democrats on the decades-old conflict. Once nearly unified in their support for Israel and its right to defend itself, Democrats in recent years have grown more critical of Israel, especially under the leadership of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his far-right government.It comes as the party’s base voters have increasingly expressed concern about the plight of the Palestinians. A Gallup poll released earlier this year marked the first time Democrats said they sympathized more with Palestinians than Israelis.A CNN poll conducted after the attack by Hamas found deep sympathy for the Israeli people among the American public. But it also found attitudes toward the conflict and the US’s response to it varied by party, with Democrats and independent voters far less likely than Republicans to say the response by the Israeli military was “fully justified”.Those divisions are only likely to become sharper as the humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorates ahead of an expected ground invasion by the Israeli military.During the call, the congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a progressive Democrat of Massachusetts, condemned the attack by Hamas and called on her colleagues to recognize the value of both Israeli and Palestinian lives.“Let me make it plain: the murder of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas is horrific and unacceptable. And the murder of innocent Palestinian civilians is a horrific and unacceptable response from Israel,” Pressley said on the press call. “Vengeance should not be a foreign policy doctrine. Our shared humanity is at stake, and we must move with urgency.” More

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    Harvard billboard accusing students of antisemitism linked to rightwing funder

    The organization that placed a billboard at Harvard University accusing some students of antisemitism amid the fight between Israel and Hamas is part of a network of rightwing media organizations being funded by a major conservative donor via a shadowy new foundation.The single largest identified donor last year to Accuracy in Media (AIM), which placed the billboard, is the Informing America Foundation (IAF), formed in 2021, which has already dished out at least $8m to rightwing nonprofit and for-profit organizations, according to IRS filings.In turn, the IAF’s biggest donor is the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, a longstanding funder of rightwing causes whose founder and namesake sits on the IAF’s board.Last Wednesday, AIM parked a truck with a billboard affixed to it on Harvard’s campus, and the organization’s president Adam Guillette went on X, formerly Twitter, to brag about the action.The billboard featured photographs of students who are members of student groups that had signed a statement after Hamas’s attacks on Israel with a caption describing them as “Harvard’s biggest antisemites”. The organization also set up a page at a special URL, harvardhatesjews.com, to fundraise off the action.The statement drew criticism for saying it held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”. University leadership then came under fire from a former president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, for not denouncing the student statement and for failing to make a stronger condemnation of Hamas.The billboard action was just the latest billboard stunt from AIM under Guillette, who has taken the 55-year old organization in a more confrontational direction.In recent months the organization has also mounted billboard campaigns against pro-Democrat social media influencer, Harry Sisson, and targeted lawmakers in Loudon, Virginia, who subsequently accused the group of harassment.AIM also publishes media criticism of outlets it considers progressive, and its columnists exhibit a preoccupation with outlets such as video news outlet Now This, Vice News and Teen Vogue.According to AIM and IAF tax filings, IAF donated $166,666 in contributions to AIM in 2022, more than 18% of the $908,474 in contributions and grants AIM declared for that year. Tax filings from the Vanguard Charitable Foundation indicate a separate contribution of $300,000 to AIM but the contributor is not identified, leaving IAF as the most significant identified donor. (Donor-advised funds are not required to disclose the identity of donors in tax filings and have thus been criticized as vectors of “dark money” to political nonprofits).But the Guardian can reveal that AIM is just one node in a network of rightwing media and activist organizations IAF is bankrolling, according to its filings.According to the publicly available tax returns, the organization has submitted since its founding in 2021, IAF has handed out more than $8m to rightwing for-profit and nonprofit organizations.In 2022, according to its tax documents, IAF donated $900,000 to Empower Oversight (formerly Empower Whistleblower Center), a nonprofit founded in 2021 to assist whistleblowers and run by three former staffers of Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. That organization’s mission statement says it is a “nonpartisan educational organization dedicated to enhancing independent oversight of government and corporate wrongdoing”.The Guardian emailed Empower Oversight for comment. In response, a spokesperson wrote that the organization was “a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization” that “works with whistleblowers regardless of their political affiliations” and holds accountable “officials from both major political parties”, pointing out that the Biden administration had appointed Empower president Tristan Leavitt to the Merit Systems Protection Board before he joined the organization in 2023.Other organizations on IAF’s donor list have a far more ideological edge, however. They include Star News Digital Media, a for-profit company that operates a network of so-called “pink slime” news sites that present themselves as local media outlets, but mostly recycle slanted stories and rightwing talking points across the network.The network was founded by three former Tea Party activists in 2017, and its outlets across 15 states have been called “Baby Breitbarts”.Real Clear Foundation, a news nonprofit, received $250,000 from the IAF in 2022. Like Empower Oversight, the 501(c)(3) organization presents itself as a nonprofit, but most of the aggregated news and original investigations on the foundation’s site at the time of reporting were directed at Democrats and specifically Joe Biden.A New York Times investigation in 2020 detailed how coverage in sites run by the Real Clear Foundation swung right during the Trump era, fueled by donations from rightwing foundations and dark money.The Guardian emailed a Real Clear Foundation spokesperson for comment but received no response.The IAF’s largest donation was to Bentley Media Group, which operates a rightwing media site called Just The News. According to Washington DC company records, Bentley Media Group’s directors include John Beck, also listed as chief operating officer of Just The News, and John Solomon, a former Washington Times, the Hill and AP reporter who is also listed as Just The News’s editor-in-chief.Beyond funding Bentley Media and Just The News, IAF’s otherwise bare-bones website highlights years-old stories from the website, and lists the two organizations together in the footer of the site.The precise relationship between the for-profit Bentley Media Group and the IAF was not clear on the site or in filings from the organizations.The IAF supported 12 rightwing media and activist organizations in 2022 according to its filings; the average donation was around $425,000.IAF chief executive Debbie Myers has a long history in the entertainment industry, with stints at a CBS affiliate and the Discovery Channel. More recently, according to her LinkedIn and contemporaneous reporting, Myers was president and chief executive of Gingrich 360, a media company founded by the Republican former House speaker Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista.The IAF itself has benefited from remarkable donor largesse in the short time since it was founded, receiving $14.3m in just two years, per its tax filings.Those filings indicate that its largest single donor is the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation (DDSF), whose founder, executive chairman and namesake Diana Davis Spencer also sits on the IAF’s board.The DDSF gave the IAF $1.5m in 2021, according to its tax filing for that year, the most recent one that is publicly available.The DDSF was reportedly instrumental in funding a network of voter suppression groups in the wake of the 2020 election and is a successor organization to foundations founded by Spencer’s parents, who were also sponsors of rightwing organizations.Spencer’s father, Shelby Cullom Davis, was an investment banker who served as the US ambassador to Switzerland under the Ford and Nixon administrations and was later chairman of the board of the rightwing Heritage Foundation from 1985 to 1992. 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    White House seeks weapons package for Israel amid ‘real risk of escalation’

    Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan toured the US Sunday morning shows to sell White House policy on the conflict between Israel and Hamas as Israeli forces massed on the border ahead of an expected ground incursion into Gaza amid a deepening humanitarian crisis there and fears over the conflict spreading.Responding to an Axios report that Iran warned Israel through the United Nations that it will intervene if the Israeli operation in Gaza continues, Sullivan told ABC’s This Week that he could not confirm it.But, he said, the US is “concerned” about the conflict spreading. “We see a real risk of escalation on the northern border and that is why President Biden has been so clear and so forceful in saying that no state and no group should seek to exploit the situation to their advantage or should escalate the conflict.”The deployment of the USS Eisenhower from the US to the region is “to give additional capacity to respond to any contingency and also to send a clear message of deterrence that no one should get involved in this, no one should escalate this”, he added.Sullivan said the Biden administration would seek a new weapons package for Israel and Ukraine, which will be significantly higher than $2bn, and hold intensive talks with US lawmakers.Sullivan said on CBS’s Face the Nation that the Israel arms package would be “to help Israel defend itself as it fights its terrorist threat”. A second US carrier group is also now confirmed headed to the region.A Hamas attack from Gaza saw in fighters kill more than 1,400 people in Israel and has sparked a retaliatory Israeli assault on Gaza. Health officials in the densely packed strip of land said on Sunday that Israel’s response had killed 2,329 Palestinians and injured 9,714. As on the Israeli side, most were civilians.The purpose of an Israeli incursion into Gaza, Sullivan told CNN, would be at the broadest level to ensure the “safety and security of the state of Israel and the Jewish people” and to “eliminate the Hamas terrorist infrastructure and Hamas terrorist threat”.Sullivan said he was “not in a position” to give a longer term picture but said the US was talking to Israel about the full set of questions to ensure that “Israel is safe and secure, and also that innocent Palestinians living in Gaza can have a life of dignity, security and peace”.The return of US hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, Sullivan said, was of “no higher priority” to the administration, despite the intense Israeli bombardment of the territory. US hostage experts have been sent to Israel, and US diplomats are in touch with third parties in the region “to explore avenues for their safe release”.Pressed on why the US had not used special forces to rescue US hostages, Sullivan confirmed that the US does not have “pinpoint location information” for where they are.“We have to refine our understanding of where they are, and who they are. We know there are 15 unaccounted-for Americans but we cannot confirm the precise number being held by Hamas,” Sullivan said.“All we can do is work closely with the Israeli government on hostage recovery options, and work through third countries to see if there are avenues for release,” he added. He said a possible prisoner swap was not currently under discussion.Pressed on the loss of life in Gaza from the Israeli bombardment and airstrikes, and the cutting off of food, water and electricity supplies, Sullivan said the US was “working actively” to ensure Palestinian access to water, medicine and food, and water had been turned back on to southern Gaza earlier Sunday.The US, he said, would continue to work with Israel, the UN, Egypt, Jordan and aid groups to make sure innocent Palestinians would have access to basic necessities and “would be protected from bombardment”.Amid reports that Gaza hospitals are overwhelmed with injured, and without electricity or adequate supplies, Sullivan said the US position is that “hospitals should have power, hospitals should not be targeted, people should have access to life-saving medical care. We do not qualify these statements, nor there is some caveat to them.”But Sullivan also said that the failure to open the Rafah Gate between Gaza and Egypt to let Americans and foreign nationals out was complicated. “The Egyptians have, in fact, agreed to allow Americans safe passage through the crossing, [and] the Israelis agreed to ensure that area would be safe.”But when on Saturday the US tried to move a group on Saturday, Sullivan said, “it was actually Hamas taking steps to prevent that from happening. We are doing all that we can to make sure Americans can get across. Secretary Blinken is meeting with the president of Egypt today and this is at the top of his list.” More