U.S. officials said Tuesday that the Israeli strike that killed dozens of Palestinians in southern Gaza was a tragedy but did not violate President Biden’s red line on withholding arms shipments to Israel .
The bloodshed came after Mr Biden warned earlier this month that the US would block certain arms transfers if Israel targeted densely populated areas of Rafah – a warning which has been regularly highlighted. ordeal as the war progressed.
John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said the deaths were “devastating” but that the scale of the attack was not enough to change U.S. policy. “We don’t want to see a major ground operation,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. “We didn’t see that.”
Israeli tanks were on the outskirts of the city “trying to put pressure on Hamas,” Mr. Kirby said. He also provided some clarification on Mr. Biden’s warning to Israel, which critics called too vague.
“We didn’t see them going in with large units and large numbers of soldiers in columns and formations in some kind of coordinated maneuver against multiple ground targets,” Mr. Kirby said. “Everything we can see tells us that they are not embarking on a major ground operation in the population centers of Rafah city. »
Mr. Biden has faced pressure from advocates and members of his own party to use his power to reduce arms deliveries to Israel to influence its conduct in the war. The United States is by far Israel’s largest arms supplier, raising questions about American responsibility as the death toll mounts.
The Rafah strike on Sunday sparked a deadly fire and killed at least 45 people, including children, and injured 249, according to Gaza’s health ministry. This sparked international outrage, including from leaders of the European Union, United Nations, Egypt and China.
Vice President Kamala Harris, when asked about Rafah on Tuesday, said “the word tragic doesn’t even begin to describe” the deaths. She did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the strike crossed a red line for Mr. Biden.
Yet the Israeli military’s conduct was similar to what Mr. Biden said he would not tolerate when he warned, in a CNN interview earlier this month, that the United States would not provide Israel arms to attack Rafah.
“I made it clear to Bibi and the war cabinet that they would not get our support if they actually went to these population centers,” Mr. Biden said in the interview.
In that interview, Mr. Biden emphasized that the United States would continue to ensure Israel’s security, citing the Iron Dome missile defense system and its support for Israel’s “ability to respond to attacks.” But he said he would block the delivery of weapons that could be fired on the densely populated areas of Rafah.
The area that was hit on Sunday was not included in evacuation orders issued by Israel in early May, and some Palestinians sheltering in the camp said they believed it to be a safe area.
The Israeli military said the target of Sunday’s attack was a Hamas compound and that “precision munitions” were used to target a commander and another senior official. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the civilian deaths were a “tragic accident.”
About a million people fled Rafah during the Israeli assault on the city, according to the United Nations, including many in the western part of the city and the area around the camp that was struck on Sunday.
A State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said the United States was closely following Israel’s investigation into the incident.
“Israel has said there may have been a Hamas munitions depot near the area where they carried out the attack,” Mr. Miller said. “This is a very important factual question to answer.”
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a news conference that Israeli planes had fired the “smallest munitions” they could use and added that “our munitions They alone could not have started a fire of this magnitude.”
Israel invaded Gaza after attacks by Hamas on October 7, which killed some 1,200 people in Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 36,000 people, many of them women and children, according to Gaza health authorities.
World leaders, including Mr Biden, have warned of the dangers of a major military operation in Rafah without a proper plan to evacuate displaced Gazans who have taken refuge there.
Mr. Miller could provide few details about the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled Rafah in recent weeks.
“Some of them returned to Khan Younis,” he said. “Some of them entered western Rafah. Some of them went to Mawasi. I don’t think there is just one answer. Mr. Miller said he did not know whether Israel was helping these people.
Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and an adviser to Palestinian leaders during previous peace negotiations, said the White House was benefiting from its ambiguous descriptions of Mr. Biden’s “red line” for the Israeli military operation in Rafah .
“It’s definitely vague and intentional,” Mr. Elgindy said. “They don’t want to be stuck. They don’t want to limit themselves to identifying an exact point or line to cross because Israel will absolutely cross that line. We’ve seen it time and time again.
Erica L. Green contributed to reporting from Washington, and Michael Crowley from New York.
News Source : www.nytimes.com
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