Rafah invasion the only way to wipe out Hamas, says Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is remaining defiant in the face of mounting United States pressure to abandon plans to invade Rafah, vowing to press ahead with an attack on the southern Gaza city, where more than 1 million displaced people have fled since the start of the war.
In remarks to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee yesterday, Netanyahu acknowledged the pressure – including from Washington – which he said Israel was “rejecting in order to achieve the goals of the war”.
His comments, which were released by his office, came after he spoke by phone with US President Joe Biden, who summoned an Israeli team to Washington for consultation over the planned assault.
They were a signal of the growing chasm between the US and Israel over its handling of the war in Gaza, which has left more than 31,800 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The entirety of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million faced acute food insecurity and needed immediate aid, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday. It was the highest-level endorsement by a US official of a report released by the world’s leading body on food emergencies.
The report, from a cluster of international organisations and charities known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative (IPC), said Gaza was facing catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation. Famine could already be happening in northern Gaza, which is cut off from the southern half of the territory, the report said.
Aid workers and Western officials remain deeply sceptical that there is a way to protect civilians during an assault on Rafah, where much of the aid coming in is inspected.
But Israel appears unswayed. Netanyahu said he “made it as clear as possible” to Biden that there was “no way” to eliminate remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah “without a ground incursion”.
“We see no way to eliminate Hamas militarily without destroying these remaining battalions. We are determined to do this,” he said.
The Prime Minister’s Office said Israel’s delegation to the US would include Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, noting pointedly that they would be sent “so that the fighting can continue”. A representative from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) would accompany them. The White House said the visit would probably take place early next week.
The tensions over Rafah come as new ceasefire talks are under way in Qatar, with hopes that mediators can get Israel and Hamas to agree to a deal that includes a pause in fighting to allow the release of some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry warned that any attack on Rafah would derail the delicate negotiations. He said Qatar was “cautiously optimistic” after a restart in talks, but a deal did not appear imminent.
David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, had left Qatar’s capital
Doha, Ansari confirmed, leaving an Israeli team in place to continue discussions.
It was a particularly “crucial time”, said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser to Netanyahu.
“If the negotiations end without a deal, Israel will go immediately to Rafah,” Amidror said in his assessment of Israel’s planning around the talks. “If it ends with a deal, Israel will wait, and then we’ll go to Rafah.
“We know Hamas will be better prepared, but we are ready to pay the price.”
Amidror said Israel did not want to see Palestinian residents return to the northern Gaza during any ceasefire, as Hamas appeared to be attempting to regroup in previously cleared areas.
He pointed to Israel’s raid on the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday. The IDF said it killed 50 militants and arrested over 180 “suspects” during the operation.
Israeli forces remained in the hospital compound, said Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence. “There has been continuous, non-stop bombing throughout the day,” Basal said, adding that it had been impossible to reach residents making distress calls.
“Twenty houses have been bombed daily since yesterday, in addition to shelling and shooting in the streets,” he said.
Biden said that any effort to “smash” into Rafah would be a mistake, and that Israel and the US, its principal military and diplomatic backer, had arrived at a “key strategic moment,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
He said Biden told Netanyahu that while he shared the goal of defeating Hamas, Israel needed to develop a “coherent and sustainable strategy to make that happen” without risking more civilian deaths and devastation in Gaza and the possibility of long-term peace.
Sullivan said Netanyahu agreed to Biden’s request to send a team of his top military, intelligence and humanitarian officials to sit down with administration officials. During the meeting, the US would “lay out an alternative approach that would target key Hamas elements … without a major ground invasion”, he said.
“Out of respect for the president,” Netanyahu said, “we agreed on a way in which they can present us with their ideas, especially on the humanitarian side.
“Of course, we fully share this desire to facilitate an orderly exit of the population and the providing of humanitarian aid,” he said, referring to the more than 1 million civilians crowded into Rafah, most of whom have fled fighting elsewhere in Gaza.
The United Nations and other humanitarian organisations have said there is nowhere safe for those people to go, that no preparations have been made to relocate them, and that any forcible displacement would be a violation of international law.
Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, yesterday blamed starvation in Gaza on Israel’s “extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, displacement of most of the population, as well as the destruction of crucial civilian infrastructure”.
“This catastrophe is human-made and was entirely preventable,” he said.
– Washington Post