OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant is to visit Washington in the coming week, the government said Wednesday, as pressure mounts to call off a planned offensive in Gaza’s Rafah.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office also announced that a delegation would visit Washington at “the request of US President Joe Biden” to discuss the planned assault, which the United States opposes.

During his first visit to Washington since war erupted in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack, Gallant is due to meet Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin – but no date was announced.

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They will discuss “efforts to secure the release of all hostages held by Hamas, the need for more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinian civilians, and plans to ensure the safety of the more than one million people sheltering in Rafah,” a US defence official said.

Netanyahu has said an operation in Rafah is necessary to eliminate Hamas in Gaza, but the presence of 1.5 million civilians in the city, many of them displaced from other parts of Gaza, has sparked fears of mass civilian casualties and a further deepening of the humanitarian crisis in the territory.

Biden said Monday he had told Netanyahu to send a team to Washington to discuss how to avoid a full-scale military operation in Rafah.

Netanyahu’s office said Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi would hold the requested talks but did not say when the delegation would leave for Washington.

The US defence official said Gallant’s scheduled meeting with Austin was separate from the delegation visit requested by Biden.