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The United States has said it will send multiple military ships and aircraft closer to Israel as a show of support following Saturday\u2019s surprise attack by the Palestinian armed group Hamas.<\/p>\n
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday said Washington will also increase military aid and provide munitions to Israel.
\nHamas has labelled the US announcement as \u201caggression\u201d against Palestinians.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe announcement of the US that it will provide an aircraft carrier to support the occupation [Israel] is actual participation in the aggression against our people,\u201d the group said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Israel battered Palestinians with air strikes in the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday, with hundreds reportedly killed on both sides.<\/p>\n
Austin said the US believes Hamas\u2019s latest attack could also be aimed at disrupting a potential normalising of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Austin said the security assistance to Israel will begin moving on Sunday and that the US will be adding fighter jets to the region as well.<\/p>\n
The US has also ordered the moving of a carrier strike group closer to Israel, which includes the Ford carrier and ships that support it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have directed the movement of the USS Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean,\u201d Austin said in a statement.<\/p>\n
US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that additional assistance for the Israeli army was on its way.<\/p>\n
US Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, held a call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington, DC, said the US contributes $3bn a year in military aid to Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been told that among the munitions will be a support for [Israel\u2019s] Iron Dome system\u2026 that is an intercept system for missiles and rockets being fired into Israel, which failed spectacularly on Saturday morning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the CNN network that \u201cit wouldn\u2019t be a surprise that part of the motivation [for Hamas\u2019s attack] may have been to disrupt efforts to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together, along with other countries that may be interested in normalising relations with Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hamas on Saturday said its attack was driven by what it called escalated Israeli attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh had highlighted threats to Jerusalem\u2019s Al-Aqsa Mosque, the continuation of an Israeli blockade on Gaza and Israeli normalisation with countries in the region.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu last month said he believed his country was on the cusp of peace with Saudi Arabia, predicting that the move could reshape the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia has long insisted on the Palestinians\u2019 right to statehood as a condition for recognising Israel, something many members of Netanyahu\u2019s nationalist religious coalition have long resisted.<\/p>\n
The US on Sunday said the Saudi-Israel normalisation efforts should continue despite the latest attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think it would be in both countries\u2019 interests to continue to pursue this possibility,\u201d US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer told Fox News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States has said it will send multiple military ships and aircraft closer to Israel as a show of support following Saturday\u2019s surprise attack by the Palestinian armed group Hamas. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday said Washington will also increase military aid and provide munitions to Israel. Hamas has labelled the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184965"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184967,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184965\/revisions\/184967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}