Israel mulls options for Rafah after U.S. threat
TEL AVIV • Israel is recalibrating the next steps of its war against Hamas following warnings by U.S. President Joe Biden that the United States will cut off offensive weapons shipments if the Israeli military advances into Rafah, the southern Gazan city that is harbouring more than one million Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to respond to Biden’s unprecedented policy shift. But Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu, said that the “surprise” warning has caught Israel off guard and will compel the war cabinet to reconsider whether and how it will enter Rafah — “if it will bear the consequence of going in without American support, or if it will stop the operation, which will allow Hamas to be unharmed in the area.”
The public rupture comes after months of disagreement between the two countries over Israel’s conduct in the war, and as ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Cairo teeter toward collapse.
On Thursday, Hamas said that it was sending its delegation back to Doha, Qatar, and that it remained committed to the ceasefire outline that it announced on Monday, even as Israel’s moves threatened negotiations. Israel maintains that the agreement Hamas approved is different from the one on the table.
Several Israeli officials did respond to Biden’s threat and repeated Israeli vows to dismantle Hamas’s four remaining battalions in Rafah and seal off the border with Egypt, where Israel says Hamas has a subterranean tunnel network designed to facilitate the smuggling of weapons.
“Israel will continue to fight Hamas until its destruction,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote Thursday on X, without mentioning the crisis. “There is no war more just than this.”
Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, described Biden’s decision as “disappointing and frustrating.” It could “harm Israel’s ability to obtain one of this war’s main objectives — toppling Hamas, for a better future for the entire region,” he said in a radio interview.
“Any pressure on Israel, any limitations on it, even from close allies who care for our interests, are being interpreted by our enemies … as something that gives them hope,” he added.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu announced the Israeli military had seized the border area near the Rafah crossing to provide “military pressure that is a necessary condition for the return of our hostages” and to “destroying Hamas.”
An estimated 80,000 people have evacuated from eastern Rafah in recent days, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency. The Israeli incursion has shut the two main crossings into southern Gaza, Rafah and Kerem Shalom.