Sullivan met in Jerusalem with Netanyahu, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and other political leaders, after earlier meeting in Saudi Arabia with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In his meeting with Netanyahu, Sullivan “reaffirmed the need for Israel to link its military operations to a political strategy that can ensure the lasting defeat of Hamas, the release of all hostages, and a better future for Gaza,” the White House said in a statement. The message from Washington comes amid internal turmoil in Israel, after cabinet minister Benny Gantz threatened Saturday to quit the government by June 8 if Netanyahu does not reach agreement by then on a post-war plan for Gaza, including who will govern the battered Palestinian enclave. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, also a member of the security cabinet, has also clashed with Netanyahu publicly and has spoken out against any Israeli military government in Gaza. During his visit to Jerusalem, Sullivan met with the US-Israel Strategic Consultative Group (SCG), which coordinates security issues, and received a detailed briefing on Israeli military operations in Gaza, the White House said. At that meeting, the two sides discussed “modalities” for ensuring Hamas’s defeat while minimizing civilian casualties, and Sullivan reiterated that US President Joe Biden opposes a large-scale military operation in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where some 1.4 million Palestinians, many of them displaced multiple times, have sought refuge during the seven-month-old war with Hamas. Sullivan also discussed with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders US efforts, along with Qatar and Egypt, to mediate negotiations between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas aimed at securing the release of all remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza, the White House said. In addition, Sullivan “proposed a series of concrete steps” to ensure that more aid reaches Gaza, including opening all existing border crossings and using a US-built floating dock off the northern Gaza coast, where humanitarian aid has begun to flow. Finally, the White House said Sullivan and his interlocutors discussed steps to create a “more effective de-escalation mechanism” that would allow aid workers to deliver assistance safely in Gaza and establish fixed corridors within the enclave to facilitate its distribution. Israel launched its offensive in the Gaza Strip on July 8 last year with the declared aim of “uprooting” the Hamas movement after it fired an unprecedented barrage of rockets into Israel hours earlier, killing more than 1,170 people, the vast majority civilians. The Islamist movement, which has controlled Gaza since 2007 and is considered a terrorist organization by the US, the European Union and Israel, is also holding 252 hostages, 124 of whom remain in captivity and 37 of whom have died, according to the latest figures from the Israeli military. The war, now in its 226th day and threatening to spread throughout the Middle East, has so far left 35,456 dead, 79,476 wounded and some 10,000 missing, presumed buried in the rubble, in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians, according to figures from local authorities. The conflict has also displaced close to two million people, plunging the impoverished and densely populated enclave into a severe humanitarian crisis, with more than 1.1 million people facing “catastrophic levels of hunger” in what the UN has said is “the highest level of food insecurity” it has ever recorded in any of its global food security surveys. The White House national security adviser also discussed with Netanyahu the “potential” for a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, after meeting Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran. Salman and Sullivan discussed a “near-final” version of an agreement to boost security ties between their countries, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Monday. The two also discussed “the work being done by both sides on the Palestinian issue to find a credible path to a two-state solution that meets the aspirations of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights,” as well as efforts to end the war and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory, the SPA said. The US administration has been trying to broker a deal that would see Saudi Arabia recognize Israel for the first time, in exchange for a US defense pact and US assistance for a Saudi civilian nuclear program capable of enriching uranium. Read Also: Joe Biden diz apoiar "manifestações pacíficas" e insiste em dois Estados (Portuguese version)