Last night, the so-called Israeli war cabinet inventoried its arsenal and evaluated options for action in Gaza presented by the armed forces after President Joe Biden’s announcement that the United States will not send weapons to Israel if it goes ahead with its plans for a major offensive. land in Rafah. “We have what we need for the missions in Rafah,” said military spokesman Daniel Hagari.
Joe Biden was more assertive than ever on Wednesday night when he said that “I have made it clear that if they enter Rafah, I will not give them the weapons that they have used (…) against the cities” in Gaza. “We are not going to supply the weapons and artillery ammunition.” This was said by the president of the United States in an interview with CNN. Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu. He would have been defiant, saying, according to an Israeli official, that “if we have to be alone, we will be alone” and that “we will defend ourselves with our nails, if necessary.” Two US officials who attended the telephone conversation denied the mention of nails, however. He would have referred to artillery munitions and bombs, but in no case to defensive weapons such as missiles for the Iron Dome anti-aircraft system. In fact, this is the same type of warning formulated weeks ago by the president.
Biden thus took another step, after suspending the shipment of 900 and 226 kilo bombs, which have devastating effects in an urban environment. In addition to causing the destruction of entire buildings, the shock waves they generate can tear internal organs in people located hundreds of meters away.
In his statements, Joe Biden said that Israeli troops “have not yet entered inhabited centers. What they have done has been right on the border –of Rafah–, and that is causing problems right now with Egypt.”
However, the Israeli army tanks were already inside Rafah, not only at the border terminal with Egypt but also on the outskirts of the city, less than four kilometers from the urban center. In what appeared to be the prelude to a ground advance, Rafah yesterday suffered intense bombardment by Israeli tanks and aircraft. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad confirmed the existence of fighting in the east of the city of Rafah. A witness, Muhanad Ahma Qishta, quoted by Agence France Presse, said that “the occupation army continues to blindly fire shells on the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, and air strikes have intensified. Even areas presented as safe by the Israeli army are bombed.” According to the United Nations, some 80,000 people had left the city until yesterday.
Given the angry reaction that Joe Biden’s words provoked in Israel – ministers, officials, commentators… – the spokesman for the US National Security Council, Jack Kirby, had to emphasize yesterday that “Biden made it clear that Israel will have the weapons necessary to defend themselves. “The United States will continue to provide Israel with the capabilities it needs, but it does not want certain categories of American weapons to be used in a certain type of operation in Rafah.” A State Department spokesperson insisted yesterday that Israel has other options for action in Rafah and that Washington would support them.
Yesterday morning, American sources and the Arab mediators – Egypt and Qatar – were moderately optimistic about a new day of negotiations in Cairo, “with the presence of all parties” and to which representatives of the Islamic Jihad and of other Palestinian factions. Hamas negotiators returned once again to Doha, Qatar, apparently due to the irruption of Israeli troops into Gaza.
The director of the CIA, William Burns, who has been in the negotiations since last Saturday, alternating visits to Cairo, Doha and Tel Aviv, returned to Washington yesterday. According to spokesman Jack Kirby, such a return was planned and did not represent the end of the negotiation. Nor, he noted, is the end of US talks with Israel over Rafah. According to an Egyptian source cited by the Qatari media Al Jadeed al Araby, “the CIA director did not manage, during his visit to Tel Aviv, to remove Netanyahu from his position of refusing to set a date to end the war” or to accept “a formula that allows it to carry out lightning military operations when necessary.”
Beniamin Netanyahu will not accept an agreement with Hamas to exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners unless such an agreement allows him to continue his operation in Rafah, aimed at eliminating the last battalions of Hamas’s armed wing, according to two US officials, one of They retired, cited by NBC.
