Defying Joe Biden, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu doubles down on plans to fight in Rafah
Plans to open new front in Gaza’s south have drawn warnings of a fresh humanitarian crisis and threaten to rile US election-year politics.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said expanding his military campaign in Gaza to the southern city of Rafah is necessary to defeat Hamas, threatening to widen a rift with the Biden administration, which has increased warnings about the potential cost in civilian lives and suffering of such a move.
Netanyahu, in an interview with ABC News on Sunday, said that not entering Rafah -- to where more than one million Palestinians have fled -- would be akin to losing the war and allowing Hamas to survive.
“You have to dismantle Hamas as a [military] force that controls territory,” he said. “We’re well and within reach, and we shouldn’t stop.” Netanyahu made similar comments to Fox News, where he defended the scale of Israel’s military response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, an event that he compared to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.
“What would America’s response be? I’d say that it would be at least as strong as Israel’s, and many Americans tell me we would have flattened them. We would have turned them into dust,” he said.
President Biden plans to talk by phone with Netanyahu later Sunday, the White House said.
By speaking on two network television channels, Netanyahu took his message directly to the U.S. public, as voters weigh how much support the U.S. should give to Israel ahead of presidential and congressional elections this year.
Biden last week called Israel’s offensive “over the top.” The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Saturday on NPR that Israel’s planned military operation in Rafah “cannot proceed” under current conditions.
Analysts say Netanyahu is seeking to extend the war in Gaza as polls show waning domestic support for him, at the same time that most Israelis believe pursuing Hamas is still vital. Taking Rafah also has strategic value because of its location bordering Egypt, to where Palestinian militants could flee to, they say.
“The Israelis understand the complexity of Biden’s elections campaign, but [Netanyahu] and the army do not feel that they can leave Rafah alone, ” said Ehud Yaari, a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank, said expanding into Rafah would not only allow Israel to shut down underground smuggling tunnels into Gaza from Egypt, but also help Israel put more pressure on Hamas to release more than 130 hostages still in the strip.
Netanyahu said on Fox News that the desire to go into Rafah wasn’t just his own, but that of the Israeli people. He said that having destroyed three-fourths of Hamas’s battalions, it would not make sense not to flush out the group’s “last remaining bastion.” Netanyahu’s comments also flew in the face of warnings from the U.N. that fighting in Rafah would exacerbate “what is already a humanitarian nightmare.” Responding to concerfns about a rising toll on Palestinian lives, Netanyahu said that the Israeli military is causing less than one civilian casualty for every terrorist casualty, which he said was less than that of comparable combat in other places.
“We’ve killed and wounded over 20,000 Hamas terrorists,” of which roughly 12,000 were fighters, he said. “And we’re doing everything we can to minimize civilian casualties, and continue to do so.” Hamas has denied that its forces have suffered heavy losses, without giving specific numbers of how many of its fighters have been killed.
About 28,000 people, mainly women and children, have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to Palestinian authorities. The number doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants. Israel began its air, ground and sea campaign in Gaza after Hamas militants conducted a cross-border attack on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
On where Palestinians would be able to go after Rafah, Netanyahu said Israel is working out a detailed plan, while mentioning “plenty of areas” north of the city that he said Israel had cleared. “We’re not cavalier about this,” he said on ABC.
In the U.S., Biden faces growing pressure to temper his support for the war, with some of his aides worried that his support for Israel could hurt his standing among younger voters as he seeks another term in office. The U.S. would like to see a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas as soon as possible to contain the conflict, said analysts.
“The [Biden] administration doesn’t seem to be convinced that the Israelis have a clear plan of what they’re planning to do,” said Ghaith al-Omari, also a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The U.S.’s Middle Eastern allies “are very, very worried” about an expanding ground war into Rafah.
Additional friction points between the U.S. and Israel include Israel’s efforts to create a buffer zone within Gaza, the degree of Israel’s postwar security control over Gaza, and the rate at which Palestinian civilians would be able to return to north Gaza, said Michael Oren, Israel’s former envoy to the U.S. In that sense, he said Israel and the U.S. are “at total loggerheads.” Israel’s plan to push into Rafah also threatens to strain relations with neighboring Egypt, where officials are worried about a flood of Palestinians fleeing Gaza and entering the Sinai Peninsula. Egyptian officials have repeatedly pressed their Israeli counterparts to limit the scale of any possible operation in Rafah, warning that Cairo has the option of suspending its 1979 peace treaty with Israel. In a move to mitigate the risks, Egypt has reinforced its border fences and added cameras, watchtowers and sensors. It has also moved tanks and infantry fighting vehicles into the border area.
Upsetting Egypt would also not bode well for ongoing negotiations between Israel and Hamas on a cease-fire plan that could free hostages still held in Gaza. Egypt, a leading mediator in those talks, has warned Hamas that it must reach an agreement with Israel within about two weeks or Israel will proceed with a ground invasion of Rafah.
--Summer Said and Annie Linskey contributed to this article.
The Wall Street Journal
