CIA chief visits Israel to discuss situation in Gaza

William J. Burns, the CIA director, arrived in Israel on on November 5 for discussions with leaders and intelligence officials, the first stop in a multicountry trip in the region, according to US officials.

The visit comes as the United States is trying to prod Israel to pursue a more targeted approach to attacking Hamas, allow pauses in the fighting for aid to enter Gaza and do more to avoid civilian casualties.

The United States is also looking to expand its intelligence sharing with Israel, providing information that could be useful about hostage locations or any follow-on attacks by Hamas. A US official briefed on Mr. Burns’s trip said he planned to reinforce the American commitment to intelligence cooperation with partners in the region.

Mr. Burns will travel to several Middle Eastern countries for discussions about the situation in Gaza, ongoing hostage negotiations and the importance of deterring the war with Hamas from widening to a broader context, the US official said.

US officials have been visiting Israel at a regular cadence since war broke out after Hamas fighters attacked Israeli towns on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians. Israel has retaliated with a punishing air campaign and ground invasion into Gaza, where Hamas is in control. More than 9,000 Palestinians have been killed in airstrikes since Israel began retaliating, according to Gaza’s health ministry. US officials said their estimates of the number of Palestinians killed were similar.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arrived on November 3 to make the case to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and key national security officials that there are more effective ways to cripple Hamas than the intense air campaign.