By Staff, Agencies

The top US military official indicated Thursday that the “Israeli” entity will have a harder time eradicating the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas the longer its military campaign in the besieged Gaza Strip drags out and the more civilians that are killed in the process.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown, asked whether he is concerned that the rapidly climbing non-combatant death toll in the entity’s war against Hamas will lead Palestinian civilians to turn to resistance, responded, “Yes, very much so”.

 “And I think that’s something we have to pay attention to,” Brown told reporters in his first comments on the war in Gaza since he took over as the top US military official last month.

“That’s why when we talk about time – the faster you can get to a point where you stop the hostilities, you have less strife for the civilian population that turns into someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas,” he said.

A senior “Israeli” official retorted to The Times of “Israel” that if the “Israel” Occupation Forces [IOF] is forced to work faster, it has less time to carry out operations surgically and in a manner that limits civilian casualties.

Brown, in his comments, called the “Israeli” entity’s war aim of toppling Hamas “a pretty large order,” while claiming that the campaign was focused on targeting senior Hamas leadership, which it might succeed in doing more quickly.

The “Israeli” entity has said Hamas’s Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar, is at the top of its kill list, as the IOF advances its ground incursion through northern sections of the Strip.

An American intelligence official told The New York Times that Sinwar’s exact location is not known to the US, but left open the possibility that the IOF has a better understanding of where he is.

The “Israeli” entity has in recent days been closing in on the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Targeting the hospital could put the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian civilians at risk, the US official warned.

Top US military officials have been pushing their “Israeli” counterparts to be “more calculating and precise” in the IOF’s Gaza strikes, an official told The New York Times, adding that Washington has urged the entity to use 250-pound satellite-guided bombs instead of 1,000- to 2,000-pound munitions.

Current and former US military commanders who spoke to The Times praised “Israel’s” decision to effectively split Gaza in half with its military assults.

The “Israeli” entity’s decision to hold off a full-scale ground invasion, instead advancing with a phased incursion that started with northern Gaza on October 27, has also won praise, with the US official telling The Times of “Israel” that it was in line with recommendations from US War Secretary Lloyd Austin to his “Israeli” counterpart, War Minister Yoav Gallant.

Nonetheless, Brown told reporters, “I think the longer this goes, the harder it can become.”

Brown avoided advocating outright for a short military campaign but did say that assaults like the one the “Israeli” entity is trying to pull off have a tendency to carry on longer than planned.

“[Almost] every conflict that I’ve been involved with throughout my military career… [has] particularly gone a bit longer than most people would have imagined. So, we’ve got to prepare ourselves for that,” he said.