For weeks, Biden secretly tried to deter Rafah invasion
President Joe Biden laid it out for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel long before letting the public know. In a conversation bristling with tension Feb. 11, the president warned the prime minister against a major assault on the Gaza Strip city of Rafah — and suggested that continued U.S. support would depend on how Israel proceeded.
It was an extraordinary moment. For the first time, the president who had so strongly backed Israel’s war against Hamas was essentially threatening to change course. The White House, however, kept the threat secret, making no mention of it in the official statement it released about the call. And indeed, the private warning, perhaps too subtle, fell on deaf ears.
Six days later, on Feb. 17, Biden heard from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The president’s chief diplomat was calling from his blue-and-white government plane as he was flying home from a security conference in Munich. Despite the president’s warning, Blinken reported that momentum for an invasion of Rafah was building. It could result in a humanitarian catastrophe, he feared. They had to draw a line.
At that point, the president headed down a road that would lead to the most serious collision between the United States and Israel in a generation. Three months later, the president has decided to follow through on his warning, leaving the two sides in a dramatic standoff. Biden has paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs and vowed to block the delivery of other offensive arms if Israel mounts a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah over his objections. Netanyahu responded defiantly, vowing to act even “if we need to stand alone.”
Biden’s journey to this moment of confrontation has been a long and tortured one, the culmination of a seven-month evolution — from a president who was so appalled by the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7 that he pledged “rock-solid and unwavering” support for Israel to an angry and exasperated president who has finally had it with an Israeli leadership that he believes is not listening to him.
“He has just gotten to a point where enough is enough,” said former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a onetime Republican senator from Nebraska
and a friend of Biden’s from their days together in Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration. “I think he felt he had to say something. He had to do something. He had to show some sign that he wasn’t going to continue this.”
Interviews with administration officials, members of Congress, Middle East analysts and others, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations,
indicate that the president’s decision came not as a sudden break but as the inexorable result of months of efforts to influence Israel’s behavior.
Ever since February, Biden has focused on Rafah and brought it up with Netanyahu again and again. A major strike in the densely populated city swelling with displaced masses seemed like a disastrous idea after many thousands had already been killed in the first
months of the war in Gaza.
“I can’t support it,” he told Netanyahu, according to an official informed about their calls. “It will be a mess.”
The president argued that Yehia Sinwar, the military leader of Hamas and reputed mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 in Israel, actually wanted an Israeli invasion because it would produce many civilian deaths and further isolate Israel from the rest of the world.
To some degree, the Israelis have responded. Despite more than three months of vowing to invade Rafah, they have yet to actually do so beyond limited strikes, perhaps an indication that the chestbeating is more about domestic politics or putting pressure on Hamas during cease-fire talks. Administration officials received some indications after Biden’s threat to cut off offensive weapons this past week that Israel may refrain from a full-fledged assault in favor of the more precise approach favored by Americans, including surgical raids and targeted strikes on Hamas leaders.
If so, the clash between Washington and Jerusalem may yet be defused. Although Biden has delayed the delivery of 500-pound bombs and particularly destructive 2,000-pound bombs that could be used in an attack on Rafah, he has not stopped other weapons shipments.
“We’ve never told them they can’t operate in Rafah,” said national security spokesman John Kirby. “What we’ve told them is that the way they do it matters and that we won’t support a major ground operation and invasion smashing into Rafah with, you know, multiple divisions of forces in a hamfisted, indiscriminate way.