Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday brushed aside President Biden’s opposition to a planned ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying his government would press ahead despite calls for restraint from the United States and key allies.
Mr Netanyahu made the remarks to Israeli lawmakers a day after speaking by phone with Mr Biden, who reiterated his position against an attack on Rafah, arguing it could be devastating for the people there and that Israel had other ways to achieve his goal. to defeat Hamas.
At the president’s request, Mr Netanyahu agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington to hear US concerns and discuss Rafa, but a day later insisted there was no alternative. Sending troops to the city is necessary, Mr. Netanyahu said on Tuesday, to eliminate Hamas battalions in the city.
“I made it as clear as possible to the president that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah and there is no way to do that without a ground invasion,” Mr Netanyahu said.
The Israeli leader acknowledged the dispute with the Biden administration and said Israel was engaged in “a dual campaign,” one military and one diplomatic.
“The diplomatic struggle gives us the time and resources to reach the full results of the war,” he said.
A US State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, said of Mr Netanyahu’s comments, “we are just completely in a different place and have a different point of view”. The government believes there are “alternative approaches that would target core elements of Hamas,” he said, and “would do so without a major ground operation in Rafah.”
Increasingly isolated abroad and unpopular at home, Mr Netanyahu is trying to retain American support while also holding together a fractious governing coalition with ultra-nationalist hardliners who oppose any softening of Israel’s approach to Gaza. Despite his decisive language on Tuesday, whether he will show any flexibility may not be clear until the US and Israeli teams meet next week to discuss Rafa.
Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 31,000 people in the Gaza Strip, according to regional health officials, and the prospect of a military incursion into Rafah, where more than a million civilians are sheltering, has raised alarm over the arrest of more civilians. crossfire.
Fleeing Israeli attacks has become a dark cycle for civilians in Gaza. Israeli evacuation orders have prompted more than a million people to move from one destination to another since October, each time packing belongings and seeking transportation – by vehicle, cart or on foot – to escape airstrikes and ground fighting between Israel and Hamas.
After following evacuation orders, civilians often found themselves in new locations either engulfed in fighting, subject to airstrikes, or without adequate food, water, shelter, sanitation and other necessities. Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, said on Monday that Israel had presented no plan to ensure that people fleeing an attack on Rafah would have anywhere safe to go.
“It will lead to more civilian deaths, it will exacerbate an already terrible humanitarian crisis,” Mr Sullivan told reporters, describing the president’s argument to Mr Netanyahu.
A panel of experts convened by the United Nations warned on Monday that food shortages were so severe that famine was “imminent” and that the enclave was on the brink of a “major acceleration in deaths and malnutrition”.
United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk blamed Israel on Tuesday for what he said was the entirely preventable famine catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.
“The situation of famine, hunger and starvation is a result of Israel’s extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, the displacement of the majority of the population, as well as the destruction of vital urban infrastructure,” said Mr. Turk. in a statement.
Israel has fended off criticism that it is restricting aid from entering Gaza, showing its support for several recent initiatives, including efforts to deliver supplies by air and sea that aid groups say are far less effective than by road. Israel also accuses Hamas of diverting aid and using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
Amid renewed calls from the United Nations for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, diplomatic talks resumed this week in Doha, Qatar. David Barnea, the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, who is serving as the head of the country’s delegation to the ceasefire negotiations, pulled out of the Doha talks on Tuesday.
Israeli media reported that other members of Israel’s negotiating team remained there, and Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said on Tuesday that Qatar remained “cautiously optimistic” as “technical groups” continued to discuss details. for a possible deal. .
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is also returning to the region this week, his sixth trip since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Speaking to reporters during a stop in the Philippines on Tuesday, Mr Blinken said his discussions would include post-war plans for Gaza and the wider Middle East, including a possible deal to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel and will lay the foundations for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.
It plans stops in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. There was no mention of a visit to Israel.
The United States has expressed growing concern over civilian deaths in Gaza, but Mr. Netanyahu insisted on Tuesday that he and Mr. Biden remained on the same page about the main goals of the war.
“We are having a discussion with the Americans about the need to enter Rafah, not about the need to eliminate Hamas, but about the need to enter Rafah,” he told lawmakers.
He said that “out of respect for the president,” he agreed to send a team to Washington so that American officials could “present to us their ideas, especially on the humanitarian side.”
The Biden administration has repeatedly warned Israel not to send ground troops into Rafah without a plan to get Palestinians there out of harm’s way, providing them with basic services and allowing increased aid flows, much of which enters through the Rafah border crossing with the Egypt.
In northern Gaza, fighting continued on Tuesday around the territory’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa. Israel’s military said its troops were “continuing precise operations” at the sprawling compound. She said she had killed dozens of fighters, although her account of the fighting could not be independently verified.
Gaza’s health ministry condemned the raid as a “crime against health facilities” and humanitarian organizations have expressed concern about the situation in the compound. The hospital, together with the surrounding area, had accommodated 30,000 patients, doctors and displaced civilians.
Israel said the hospital complex doubled as a secret Hamas military command center, calling it one of many examples of civilian facilities Hamas uses to shield its operations. Hospital administrators denied the claim.
The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a social media post on Monday that the Israeli raid “put health workers, patients and civilians at risk.”
“Hospitals should never be battlefields,” he said.
The report was made by Matthew Boke Big, Nick Cumming-Bruce, Aaron Boxerman and Gabby Sobelman.
