How Israeli forces pushed deeper into Rafah a few days after a air raid caused a huge fire that killed dozens of the Palestinians, the White House said its ally had not crossed the The “red line” of the Biden administration.
Israeli tanks were seen entering the center of Rafah for the first time on Tuesday, as global condemnation grew over the deaths at a crowded camp for displaced civilians and as US aid deliveries to Gaza by sea have been suspended following damage to its temporary dock. And on Wednesday the country’s national security adviser said he expected the war to continue until the end of the year.
But National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told journalists at a briefing that the United States was not “turning a blind eye” to Israel’s operations in the southern city of Gaza, where about 1 million people live. Palestinians have fled in recent weeks.
He said the Biden administration does not believe Israel’s actions in Rafah thus far represent a “major ground operation” that would violate President Joe Biden’s warnings and trigger a change in U.S. policy, including a threat to suspend arms shipments. .
“A major ground operation consists of, you know, thousands and thousands of troops moving in a maneuvered, concentrated, coordinated manner against a variety of targets on the ground,” he said.
A US official also told NBC News that although the US believed the deadly attack was a “horrific incident”, it appeared to be the result of an airstrike gone “horribly wrong” and did not represent Israel “crushing Rafah”.
Biden told CNN earlier this month: “I have made it clear that if they enter Rafah – they have not entered Rafah yet – if they enter Rafah, I will not provide the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah. , to deal with cities – who deal with this problem.”
Asked by NBC News’ Gabe Gutierrez about how the Israeli tanks appearing near central Gaza did not represent a large-scale ground operation, Kirby said Israeli officials asserted that their tanks were moving along the Philadelphia Corridor, a important strategic strip of land running along the Egypt-Gaza border, and “not in the city proper”.
“That’s what the Israelis said,” Kirby responded. “We are going based on what the Israelis are telling us and what they are saying publicly and what we are able to discern, as best we can.”
Kirby’s comments came just days after the Israeli airstrike sparked a fire that devastated the camp in Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, killing at least 45 people, including children, according to local health officials.
Hala Rharrit, US diplomat and veteran foreign service officer who resigned from the State Department last month in protest against Washington’s policy on Israel’s war in Gaza, he said he felt the Biden administration was now trying to “get out of this latest shift” in what constitutes a “red line”.
“The president’s goal of saying population centers were a ‘red line’ is to avoid mass civilian casualties,” she said in a phone interview with NBC News on Wednesday. “Whether they’re coming in in tanks or through airborne bombs, are we really trying to mince words?”
The attack on the camp added to growing international pressure after the United Nations’ top court ordered Israel to stop its offensive in Rafah. The UN Security Council could vote as early as Wednesday on a draft resolution distributed by Algeria ordering Israel to immediately stop its offensive and demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, according to the Associated Press.
Israel presented a new ceasefire proposal to Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators on Monday, an Israeli official told NBC News. The proposal offered a “sustainable calm”, but not a complete end to the war, as Hamas demanded.
Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told NBC News on Tuesday that Hamas had not received any proposals from the mediators.
In a briefing on Tuesday, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel was still investigating the Rafah attack, including what caused the fire that he said “resulted in this tragic loss of life.”
He said the IDF fired two 17-kilogram (37.5-pound) warheads at two senior Hamas militants, but said that somehow a fire was lit, adding that the fire was “unexpected and unintentional.”
He suggested the possibility that weapons stored in the hit area could have ignited the fire, but said that was a “guess” at this time. An Israeli official and a U.S. official separately told NBC News that it was possible a fuel tank had been hit, sparking the fire.
Images of the attack increased pressure on the US to act.
Asked during Tuesday’s White House briefing how many “charred corpses” Biden needed to see before changing policy, Kirby said he was “offended” by the question, saying, “We don’t want to see another single innocent life taken.” .
The IDF waged a months-long ground offensive in Gaza, during which more than 36,000 people were killed, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Israel launched the offensive after Hamas October 7 horror attacks, in which around 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others taken hostage, according to Israeli officials. Around 125 people are believed to remain detained in Gaza, with at least around a third dead.
On Wednesday, National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi said on Israeli radio that “we still expect another 7 months of fighting this year to deepen the conquest and carry out what we define as the destruction of Hamas’ governmental and military capabilities, without set a timer for ourselves.”
Biden’s warning about the US “red line” is reminiscent of that of former president Barack Obama own use of the phrase in August 2012when it issued a warning about the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war.
Critics accused Obama of allowing this border to be crossed without US action, with political opponent John McCain saying that the Obama administration’s red line it seemed to be “written in disappearing ink.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
