Strains appear in US-Israel ties

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Saudi Arabia Wednesday, launching a tour of the Middle East to try to secure a ceasefire in the Gaza war as increasing strain showed in Washington's relationship with its ally Israel.
Following his visit to Saudi Arabia, Blinken is due in Egypt Thursday and Israel on Friday.
The State Department announced Blinken's planned stop in Israel only after he had arrived in Saudi Arabia. No explanation was immediately given for why it was omitted from the initial itinerary.
On Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed a plea from US President Joe Biden to call off plans for a ground assault of Rafah, the city on the southern edge of Gaza sheltering more than half the enclave's 2.3mn people.
Netanyahu told lawmakers he had made it "supremely clear" to Biden in a phone call "that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there's no way to do that except by going in on the ground".
Washington says a ground assault on Rafah would be a "mistake" and cause too much harm to civilians.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said one of Blinken's aims was to discuss with Israeli leaders how to defeat Hamas "including in Rafah, in a way that protects the civilian population, does not hinder the delivery of humanitarian assistance and advances Israel’s overall security."
The public tension between the Biden and Netanyahu administrations has little precedent in Israel's history as a close ally of Washington since its founding in 1948.
Last week, Chuck Schumer, leader of Biden's Democratic Party in the Senate and the highest-ranking Jewish US elected official, called for Israeli voters to replace Netanyahu. Biden called it a "good speech"; Netanyahu called it "inappropriate".
Netanyahu is increasingly aligning with Biden's domestic political opponents in a US presidential election year. A source familiar with the plan said Netanyahu would address US Republican senators in a video linkup to their weekly policy lunch on Wednesday.
Despite months of talks mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar with Hamas, they still differ on what would follow any truce. Hamas says it will release hostages only as part of an agreement that would end the war; Israel says it will discuss only a temporary pause.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told a Beirut news conference that Israel, in its note rejecting the latest Hamas offer, had retracted elements it had previously accepted.