White House says Israel’s Rafah strike and ground assault do not violate Biden’s “red line”
By Chantal Da Silva, Monica Alba, Raf Sanchez and Abigail Williams
29/05/2024
As Israeli forces pushed deeper into Rafah just days after an airstrike sparked a major fire that killed dozens of Palestinians, the White House said that its ally had not crossed the Biden administration’s “red line.”
Israeli tanks were observed in the central Rafah in the very first instance on Tuesday as the world condemned the deaths of a crowd-shaded camp for refugees in addition to the fact that U.S. aid delivery to Gaza through the sea were stopped because of damage to its temporary Pier. On Wednesday, the National Security Advisor of the country declared that he was expecting that the conflict would continue until the close of the year.
However, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby informed reporters at an information session that the United States was not turning an “blind eye” to Israel’s operations in the southern Gaza city, where approximately one million Palestinians have been evacuated in the last few months.
He stated that the Biden administration was not convinced that the actions of Israel in Rafah to date could be an “major ground operation” that could violate the warnings of President Joe Biden and result in a change to U.S. policy, including the threat of a halt to arms shipment.
“A major ground operation is, you know, thousands and thousands of troops moving in a maneuvered, concentrated, coordinated way against a variety of targets on the ground,” the commander said.
An U.S. official similarly told NBC News that while America believed that the fatal strike was an “horrific incident,” it was caused by an airstrike going “horribly wrong” and didn’t necessarily represent Israel “smashing into Rafah.”
Biden stated to CNN earlier in the monththat “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 — that deal with that problem.”
In response to NBC News’ Gabe Gutierrez what Israeli tanks that appear to be near the center of Gaza were not an entire ground operation, Kirby stated that Israeli officials claimed the tanks are moving on the Philadelphi Corridor, a key land strip that runs along the border between Egypt and Gaza inand “not in the town proper.”
“That’s what the Israelis have said,” Kirby replied. “We’re going based on what the Israelis are telling us and what they’re saying publicly and what we’re able to discern, as best we can.”
Kirby’s remarks were made just a few days after an Israeli airstrike set off the blaze that ravaged through the camp for tents located in the Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, killing more than 45 people, including children, as per Health officials from the area.
Hala Rharrit is the U.S. diplomat and veteran foreign service officer who quit the State Department last month to protest Washington’s policies regarding Israel’s military campaign in Gaza She said that she believed the Biden administration was looking to “wiggle their way out of this latest shift” regarding what is the “red line.”
“The point of the president saying population centers were a ‘red line’ is to avoid mass civilian casualties,” she stated in a telephone interview with NBC News on Wednesday. “Whether they’re going in by tanks or it’s happening via bombs coming from the air, are we really trying to mince words?”
Attacks on the tent camp intensified international pressure since the United Nations’ top court has ordered Israel to stopits attack in Rafah. This U.N. Security Council could decide in the next few days on a resolution proposed by Algeria directing Israel to stop immediately its offensive, and calling for the end of the war in Gaza according to The Associated Press.
Israel has submitted a cease-fire agreement in the presence of Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators on Monday an Israeli official said to NBC News. The plan promised “sustainable calm” but not the complete end of the conflict as requested by Hamas.
Basem Naim an official from Hamas, who is a top Hamas official, revealed to NBC News on Tuesday that Hamas has not received a suggestion from mediators.
The images from the strike have piled pressure on the U.S. to act.
In a press conference the previous day, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel is still investigating what caused the Rafah strike, including the reason that was the cause of the fire, which was said to have “resulted in this tragic loss of life.”
He said that the IDF shot two 17-kilogram (37.5 pounds) warheads at two top Hamas militants. He claimed that a fire somehow set off, and the fire caused the fire to be “unexpected and unintended.”
He suggested that the weapons in the targeted area could be the cause of the fire but added that it was just an “assumption” at this point. A Israeli official and a U.S. official separately told NBC News it was possible that a tank of fuel was hit which ignited the fire.
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In the Tuesday White House briefing how many “charred corpses” Biden needed to examine before changing his the policy, Kirby said he took “offense” to the question saying: “We don’t want to see a single more innocent life taken.”
The IDF has been conducting a month-long offensive on the ground in Gaza where more than 36,000 Gazans have been killed as per the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israel began the offensive in response to Hamas the ‘Oct. 7. terrorist terror attacks that claimed more than 1200 people were killed, and around 250 more were held hostage, the official said.according the Israeli officials. There are 125 suspects to be held in Gaza and at least about a third believed be dead.
On Wednesday, National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi stated via Israeli broadcasts on the radio that “we still expect another 7 months of fighting this year to deepen the achievement and accomplish what we define as the destruction of Hamas’s governmental and military capabilities, without setting a stopwatch for ourselves.”
Biden’s admonition about”the U.S. “red line” recalls previous President Obama’s own use of the term during August of 2012 when Obama issued a cautionary statement about using chemical weapons during the Syrian civil conflict.
The critics have accused Obama of allowing this line to be crossed without intervention in within the U.S., with political opposition John McCain saying the Obama administration’s red lineappeared to appear to be “written in disappearing ink.”
