What the US is telling Israel about a Gaza ground invasion — and what Israel is hearing

Each time U.S. military and diplomatic officials asked their Israeli counterparts in recent days what the endgame was as warplanes bombarded the Gaza Strip, the Israelis said, "Not now."

The time was now to crush the Hamas militant group that made Oct. 7 the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust and figure out the aftermath later, the Israeli officials said, according to sources in the U.S. and Israel familiar with the talks.

This raised alarm for American officials who feared that Israel did not have a clear path to its stated goals of eradicating Hamas and that the conflict could widen disastrously throughout the region as the number of Palestinian casualties ballooned.

In response, the Biden administration urgently dispatched a team of senior military officials to Tel Aviv, led by a three-star U.S. Marine general with experience in Iraq, to urge that a well-planned urban combat strategy be articulated while taking steps to minimize the .