PM brushes off Biden: We’ll go it alone
US president says he won’t send arms for use in Rafah op • Hostage talks at standstill
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to fight Hamas with his fingernails as he dismissed US President Joe Biden’s warning that he would not provide arms for a major military operation in Rafah.
“If we need to stand alone, we will stand alone,” Netanyahu said in a message he issued on Thursday night. “I have said that if necessary – we will fight with our fingernails.
“But we have much more than fingernails and with that same strength of spirit, with God’s help, together we will win,” he said.
He spoke after Biden told CNN Wednesday, “I’ve made it clear that if they [Israel] go into Rafah... I’m not supplying the weapons that have historically been used to deal with Rafah,”
That statement followed one made earlier that day by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that a shipment of precision munitions designated for Gaza had been paused.
Should Biden make good on his pledge, it would mark the first tie-in presidency and indeed in over 40 years of American-Israel relations, that arms were withheld from Israel.
It was a move that displayed
the growing enmity between Washington and Jerusalem over the Gaza war. Israel has insisted that a major military operation in Rafah was necessary to defeat Hamas and the Biden administration has been adamant that there were other ways to neutralize the threat.
Pundits warned that
Biden’s statement sent a dangerous signal to Israel’s enemies, even as the Jewish state waged an existential war, that the United States did not have did not have Israel’s back.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted on X a simple message that went straight to that point, stating “Hamas loves Biden.”
Israel has viewed the Rafah operation as an important pressure lever to sway Hamas to finalize a hostage deal, negotiations for which have taken place on and off in Cairo all week.
On Thursday, in the aftermath of Biden’s statement opposing a Rafah operation, KAN news reported that talks had fallen apart and that Israel’s delegation had returned home.
CIA Director William Burns left the region after shuttling between Cairo, Doha, and Jerusalem this week in an attempt to make a deal. US National Security Advisor John Kirby told reporters that his departure was pre-scheduled and that talks were still ongoing in Cairo.
In Washington, Republicans rallied behind Israel, issuing blistering attacks against Biden, heightening the extent to which the Gaza war is now a partisan issue in the presidential race.
Former president Donald Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee, said “Crooked Joe” is taking the side of Hamas just like he
launching explosive drones toward an Israeli military base in the North.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has been the most intense since 2006. Both sides stepped up their bombardments this week.
The IDF said it had identified several launches crossing from Lebanon. A number of hits in the area of Shlomi, near the Lebanese border, had caused a fire to break out. No casualties were reported.
The IDF said it had intercepted two drones within Lebanese territory and carried out strikes on southern Lebanon, including against what it said was Hezbollah infrastructure.
St.-Sgt. Haim Sabach, 20, from Holon fell in combat on May 8 during an operation in the North, the IDF said Thursday.
In the South, tanks and warplanes bombarded areas of Rafah on Thursday, Palestinian residents said.
The latest round of indirect negotiations in Cairo to halt hostilities had ended, and Israel would proceed with its operation in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip as planned, a senior Israeli official said Thursday.
Israel has submitted to mediators its reservations about a Hamas proposal for a hostage release deal, and the Israeli delegation was returning from Cairo, the official added.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had fired anti-tank rockets and mortars at Israeli tanks on the eastern outskirts of the city.
Residents and medics in Rafah said an Israeli attack near a mosque had killed at least three people and wounded others in the eastern Brazil neighborhood.
Video footage from the scene showed the minaret lying in the rubble, two bodies wrapped in blankets, and a wounded man being carried away.
On the city’s eastern edge, residents said a helicopter had opened fire, while drones hovered above houses in several areas, some close to rooftops.
Israel says Hamas terrorists are hiding in Rafah, where the population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of Gazans seeking refuge from bombardments elsewhere in