December 13, 2023 Israel-Hamas war

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan is in Saudi Arabia for talks on preventing the Israel-Hamas conflict from spreading, a US official said Wednesday.

He is visiting the kingdom ahead of his trip Thursday to Israel. While there he met the country's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a person familiar with the matter said.

In Saudi Arabia, he plans to discuss the broader diplomatic efforts undertaken by the Biden administration to maintain stability in the region, the official said, including efforts to deter Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

He'll also attempt to build on work that had been underway before the October 7 attacks on normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which had included steps toward building peace with the Palestinians.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan will conduct “extremely serious conversations” with Israeli officials during his visit this week, the White House says, as the US looks to press Israel to conduct a more “surgical” campaign against Hamas.

Sullivan is expected to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu along with the Israeli war cabinet during the trip, which begins Thursday. He also plans to meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

The national security adviser will address the issue of aid flowing into Gaza and the “next phase of the military campaign,” according to John Kirby, the Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council.

Sullivan will discuss with the Israelis “efforts to be more surgical and more precise and to reduce harm to civilians.”

“That is an aim of ours. And the Israelis say it is an aim of theirs,” Kirby said. “But it's the results that count.”

He said the US has concerns about Israel’s prosecution of its offensive against Hamas — as demonstrated by President Biden’s remarks to Democratic donors Tuesday — and has raised those with Israeli officials.

“I’m not going to get ahead of the conversations that Jake will be having,” Kirby went on. “But I would like to just say that these are extremely serious conversations and we hope there'll be constructive as well.”

Sullivan is likely to make additional stops in the region, though Kirby declined to say where.

A hostage who was thought still to be alive in Gaza has now been pronounced dead, the Israeli prime minister’s office said.

Tal Chimi, 41, was taken hostage on October 7, the office said. 

Chimi was the grandson of the founders of kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, where he lived, according to a joint statement on behalf of the Chimi family, the kibbutz and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum headquarters.

“He was connected in every fiber of his soul to the kibbutz, and was one of the pillars of the community,” the statement said.

The kibbutz was one of several communities in southern Israel attacked in the early morning of October 7 by Hamas militants.

Chimi leaves behind his wife, three children — 9-year-old twins and a 6-year-old son — his father Zohar and his sister Or, the statement said.

Israeli officials told the US that, going forward, they will give detainees their clothes back "immediately" if strip-searches are conducted, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Wednesday.

The remark comes after images emerged last week of men in Gaza who were detained by Israeli forces, blindfolded, and stripped down to their underwear. 

Miller also said that Israeli officials told the US that the photos should not have been taken or released, "and they made it clear going forward that that will not be their practice."

"Those are obviously the appropriate steps to take," Miller said at a press briefing.

"They have informed us is that they conduct searches on detained individuals in Gaza to ensure that they are not wearing suicide vests, that they don't have other weapons, and that they pose no danger to (Israel Defense Forces) forces," he said.

Asked if the US is OK with the continued strip-searching of detainees, Miller said:

Additional inspections points for humanitarian aid bound for Gaza are helping accelerate shipments through the Rafah border crossing – with the amount of fuel being allowed in to rise by about one-third, Egypt said.

On Tuesday, Israeli authorities began inspecting humanitarian aid trucks at two crossings between Israel and Gaza, but the trucks must still cross from Egypt through Rafah into Gaza.

The additional inspections should allow 60 to 80 more trucks to enter Gaza every day, said Diaa Rashwan, chair of Egypt's State Information Service. He added that there was also agreement on increasing the amount of fuel entering the strip daily from 129,000 liters (about 34,000 gallons) to 189,000 liters (about 49,900 gallons), in addition to two domestic cooking gas trucks. 

The amounts are still far lower than what international aid agencies say is required amid a growing humanitarian crisis exacerbated by overcrowding in makeshift encampments and cold, wet weather.

Since aid began crossing into Gaza, 3,866 tonnes of medical help had been sent in, as well as 22,799 tonnes of food; 13,936 tonnes of water; 48 ambulances; and 2,678 tonnes of fuel, Rashwan said.

The families of American hostages held by Hamas offered effusive praise for President Joe Biden's administration after meeting at the White House with the president Wednesday.

“It was a terrific, terrific meeting, conversation,” Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son, Sagui Dekel-Chen, was captured by Hamas on October 7. “I think we all came away feeling that, as families of hostages of American Israeli hostages, which are eight out of a total of 138 hostages, we felt — we felt before, and we were only reinforced, seeing and believing, that we could have no better friend in Washington or in the White House than the president himself.”

Liz Naftali, the great-aunt of Abigail Edan, the 4-year-old Israeli American hostage released by Hamas last month, called her great-niece “a miracle, a light in this very dark time,” adding Biden and his administration “have been bringing out light in this dark time.”

She also thanked Pope Francis for calling for the safe release of all hostages in Gaza.

Dekel-Chen said the administration has been in “frequent, very transparent contact” with the families of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, but told reporters the families are “going to keep the content of the conversation private.” 

While he declined to weigh in on calls for a ceasefire, Dekel-Chen said the meeting with the president “only reinforced that they are willing and ready to do all that they possibly can, by any number of means, to get the hostages out.”

Naftali, for her part, thanked members of the administration for centering the humanity of those still being held hostage.

“And that is what the president and (US Secretary of State Antony) Blinken understand — is that they are just not numbers and they're just not faces, they are sons,” she said. “They are sons. They are grandparents, they are mothers, and that is what the president and his team understand.”

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the overwhelming vote at the UN General Assembly in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza makes clear "that the world wants this conflict to end, which is a goal that we share."

The US vetoed the resolution, as well as a resolution in the Security Council last week calling for a ceasefire.

"We don't want to see it go on a day longer than is necessary," Miller said at a press briefing Wednesday, but added that the US does not believe stopping Israel's military campaign now "is in the long-term security interests of anyone in the region."

Miller also said that while Hamas can be defeated, "you can't defeat an idea on the battlefield."

"It is incumbent upon Israel, it is incumbent upon other countries in the region, it is incumbent upon the United States and other every country around the world who wants to be the responsible player to present a better idea" than Hamas, Miller added.

The US believes that the Palestinian Authority "is the representative of the Palestinian people, and a revitalized, reformed, revamped Palestinian Authority is the proper path forward for governance of a reunited West Bank and Gaza," Miller re-iterated with the caveat that "obviously, the Palestinian Authority is not in position to step in tomorrow and begin to administer Gaza."

This post has been updated with additional remarks from the US State Department spokesperson.

Two people have been killed and one injured in an attack involving "enemy aircraft targeting and destroying a house" in the town of Yater in southern Lebanon, the country's National News Agency reported on Wednesday. 

Yater is about 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) from the border with Israel.

It comes after further Israel-Hezbollah crossfire was reported between the border of Israel and Lebanon on Wednesday.

Several launches from Lebanon toward the area of Yiftah in northern Israel were identified, the Israel Defense Forces said. The rockets fell in open areas, and the IDF was targeting the sources of the fire in Lebanon.

A Hezbollah cell had been hit in Lebanon, and a fighter jet had struck a Hezbollah military compound, the IDF added.

Earlier Wednesday, the IDF said sirens sounded in kibbutz Rosh HaNikra in northwestern Israel, which is a few hundred meters away from the Blue Line — the border between Israel and Lebanon. The IDF said it detected several launches from Lebanon toward Israel, but those launches landed within Lebanon.

Hezbollah on social media said it had targeted a location near the border area on the Mediterranean Sea. 

Meanwhile, NNA said an Israeli shell had landed in Muhaybeb, Lebanon.

This post has been updated to include the number of deaths and injuries as reported by NNA.

Haraz Coffee House in Dearborn, Michigan, is usually teeming with customers eager for a taste of its delicious Yemeni coffee – but on Monday there wasn’t a single person in sight.

The popular café on Michigan Avenue was closed, as its owner and employees participated in a global strike calling for a ceasefire in the devastating war in Gaza.

“Today is the day to put everything that matters in our lives aside to focus on the lives of those in Gaza and to call for an immediate ceasefire,” owner Hamzah Nasser told CNN. He closed all 12 locations of his cafés in Michigan, Kentucky, Texas, Illinois and California.

Palestinian groups announced the global strike on Saturday, one day after the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. The strike on Monday and Tuesday saw businesses temporarily close, employees call out of work, consumers refrain from shopping and students skip classes.

Alex Tarzikhan, a legal adviser at a human rights organization in Washington, DC, says she called out of work in solidarity with Palestinians and other people of conscience.

Tarzikhan says she regularly checks on Bisan Owda, and other Palestinian journalists, and is often left feeling helpless by the graphic and heart-wrenching images they post on social media.

CNN’s Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.