Biden vows US will cut off weapons to Israel if it goes into Rafah
Washington: The US will stop supplying weapons to Israel if it follows through with its planned invasion of Rafah, in a significant shift by President Joe Biden over the war in Gaza.
After months of public and political pressure, Biden has drawn a red line over Israel’s handling of the war, vowing to halt some weapons to the Jewish state if it moves ahead with its planned offensive in the refugee-packed Gazan city.
US President Joe Biden and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem,” he said in an interview with CNN.
The comments represent the most direct threat Biden has made to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the war began on October 7.
In the same interview, he also acknowledged for the first time that 2000-pound bombs supplied by the US have been used against civilians in Gaza – where more than 34,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” he said.
Rafah is the last major stronghold in Gaza, with more than one million civilians sheltering there. While the US remains committed to Israel’s defence and will still supply Iron Dome rocket interceptors and other arms, halting artillery shells and other weapons in the event of an attack on Rafah is a significant step for a country that has historically provided enormous amounts of military aid to its top Middle East ally.
Only last month, the president signed a long-awaited funding bill providing military aid to Israel after weeks of turmoil on Capitol Hill, so his latest comments are likely to enrage Republicans and fuel claims he is not complying with Congress.
However, Biden, a self-described Zionist, has struggled for months to balance his long-standing support for Israel with the growing calls for innocent civilians to be protected.
This included calls from Democrats and progressives within his own ranks, who have been urging the president to use the supply of weapons as leverage against.
The most damning condemnation came from Jewish independent senator Bernie Sanders, who described the carnage in Gaza as “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the modern history of the world” and told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “stop murdering innocent people”.
Biden’s vow to not back a Rafah offensive comes as outrage over the atrocities in Gaza continue to spill out at university campuses across America, where pro-Palestinian encampments have sprung up over the past few weeks and thousands of students have been arrested following clashes with police.
The latest took place a few blocks from the White House on Wednesday, when police used pepper spray while breaking up an encampment that emerged at George Washington University on April 25.
About 33 demonstrators were arrested after police said they found signs protesters had “gathered improvised weapons” and were “casing” university buildings with the possible intention of occupying them.
These arrests come almost a week after police stormed Columbia University to round up protesters who broke into a historic campus and demanded that the Ivy League institution sever all ties with Israel.
Republicans have seized on the unrest to cast Joe Biden as weak and unable to control the country six months from the election.
“These agitators are really hurting our country,” Trump said in New York after enduring a day of salacious testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels in his hush money trial.
“I think our government ought to find out who they are, where they’re from, and treat them in the same way as they do the J6 Hostages” – a reference the rioters jailed for the deadly attack on the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.