TEL AVIV: In a reversal, Israel agreed to send its war strategists to Washington to discuss its intention to launch a ground assault on Hamas militants in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

On Monday, Israel had called off the trip in protest against the U.S. refusal to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

The United States, Israel’s staunchest ally in the nearly six-month war, abstained from this week’s U.N. vote after vetoing similar resolutions earlier.

That drew a rebuke from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, evidence of a growing split with Washington over the Jewish state’s conduct of the war.

But even as Netanyahu called off a trip by one set of his war strategists, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was in Washington for talks this week with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Netanyahu has said a Rafah attack is necessary to erase any Hamas control of Gaza, the narrow enclave along the Mediterranean Sea.

But the U.S. has told Israel it is opposed to a Rafah invasion, especially since more than a million Palestinian civilians are sheltered there in makeshift tents and structures.

Israel has said it will move the Palestinians to safety before any attack on four Hamas battalions based in Rafah, but it has not indicated where it will send them.

While maintaining that the U.S. abstention was “very, very bad,” Netanyahu told visiting U.S. Republican Senator Rick Scott that his initial cancellation of the Israeli delegation’s trip “was a message first and foremost to Hamas: Don’t bet on this [United Nations] pressure [for a cease-fire]. It’s not going to work.”

Netanyahu said the Security Council vote “encouraged Hamas to take a hard line and to believe that international pressure will prevent Israel” from achieving its war aims.

Israel has vowed to keep fighting until the Hamas military is destroyed and the remaining 100 or so hostages it is holding are freed.

The White House said that it was “a good thing” to hold more talks with Israeli officials and that a date was being discussed.

(VOA)