Defiant Netanyahu prepared to ‘stand alone’
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country will “stand alone” if it has to in its war against Hamas – threatening to deepen a crisis in relations with the United States.
Mr Netanyahu spoke after president Joe Biden said the US would not provide offensive weapons for Israel’s longpromised assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Israel says that Rafah is Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza, and Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to invade the city despite widespread international opposition due to concerns over the more than one million Palestinian civilians huddled in the city.
“If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone,” he said. “If we need to, we will fight with our fingernails. But we have much more than fingernails.”
Mr Biden’s comments about providing weapons were the latest sign of steadily deteriorating relations between Israel and its closest and most important ally after seven months of Israel’s war against Hamas.
The threat of losing a key flow of arms has raised questions about Israel’s ability to continue the war.
Asked whether Israel could press ahead without American arms, the army’s spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Israel already has the weapons it needs for the Rafah operation.
Israel’s initial push into Rafah, along with Hamas attacks on Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, have disrupted the flow of aid into Gaza and raised new concerns about worsening the territory’s already dire humanitarian situation.
Yesterday, the first aid ship bound for an American-built floating pier to be installed in Gaza departed. But it is unclear when the corridor will be up and running, and humanitarian groups say there are still major obstacles to getting food to starving Palestinians in the war-ravaged enclave.
The UN says most of the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians suffer from hunger and that northern gaza is already experiencing“full-blown fa mine ”.
Humanitarian workers fear an even more dire situation if Israel launches its long-promised invasion of Rafah, which is the main distribution point for aid and where some 1.3 million Palestinians have sought refuge, most having fled from fighting elsewhere.
Mr Biden said on Wednesday that the US would not supply offensive weapons for an allout invasion, in the latest escalation of tensions between the two close allies.
Earlier, Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-gvir, wrote a post on the platform X with a heart between the words “Hamas” and “Biden”.
He and other ultra-nationalist members of Mr Netanyahu’s coalition support a large-scale Rafah operation and have threatened to bring down his government if it does not happen.
Israel’s limited military incursion into Rafah has meanwhile already complicated what had been months of efforts by the US, Qatar and Egypt to broker a ceasefire and the release of hostages captured in Hamas’s October 7 attack that triggered the war.