‘Halt Rafah invasion or no more arms’
Israel shells southern Gaza city as Biden sternly warns against ground offensive
Rafah: Israel shelled Rafah as United States President Joe Biden offered his starkest warning yet over its conduct in the besieged Gaza Strip, vowing to cut off arms transfers if an offensive into the southern city goes ahead.
Israel has already defied international objections by sending in tanks and conducting “targeted raids” in the border city, which it says is home to Palestinian resistance group Hamas’ last remaining battalions but is also crowded with displaced Palestinian civilians.
AFP journalists reported heavy shelling in Rafah early yesterday.
The Israeli military later said it was also striking “Hamas positions” further north in the centre of the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop US weapons supplies to Israel if it pushed ahead with its long-threatened Rafah ground offensive.
Israel yesterday called the threat “very disappointing”.
“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used ... to deal with the cities,” Biden told CNN.
“We’re not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used,” he added.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel seized Rafah’s border crossing into Egypt, which has served as the main entry point for aid into Gaza.
The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries at the time.
The Defence Secretary later confirmed Washington had paused a shipment of heavy bombs to Israel after it failed to address concerns over its Rafah ground incursion.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” Biden said in his interview. “It’s just wrong.”
He insisted that the US, Israel’s staunchest ally, is “not walking away from Israel’s security”.
In Israel’s first reaction to Biden’s threat, its ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, called it “a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war”.
The US, along with Egypt, has been heavily involved in talks currently underway in Cairo aimed at brokering a truce.
A senior Hamas official said the latest round of negotiations would be “decisive”.
Hamas “insists on the rightful demands of its people”, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly about the talks.
The Hamas official had previously warned that the Cairo talks would be Israel’s “last chance” to free the hostages.
Palestinian analyst Mkhaimar Abusada said Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing could be an attempt to create new facts on the ground, or a bid to “sabotage the truce talks”.