WASHINGTON (CN) — Israel will send a delegation to Washington this week at the urging of President Joe Biden to present an alternative to a ground assault on the densely packed city of Rafah.
Biden’s phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday was the latest and potentially most significant effort by Washington to rein in Israel’s conduct in its war in Gaza.
Rafah is the sole border crossing between the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. It is where more than 1.5 million refugees have fled from the rest of Gaza as Israel continues its war against Hamas since the latter’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Egypt has stymied the flow of refugees through the border to avoid a crisis in the Sinai Peninsula, leaving many camped out at the crossing with nowhere else to go.
Over the past month, Biden administration officials have said they won’t support a major offensive in Rafah without a credible plan for the refugees, though they’ve been reticent to articulate any consequences Israel would face for moving forward. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, said Biden did not threaten military aid if Israel moves into Rafah.
“Israel has not presented us or the world with a plan for how or where they would safely move those civilians, let alone feed and house them and ensure access to basic things like sanitation,” he said.
Netanyahu’s office signed off on a plan for the operation on Friday. In a statement about Monday’s call, Netanyahu did not mention sending a delegation to Washington or disagreement over operations in Rafah.
“We discussed the latest developments in the war, including Israel's commitment to achieving all of the war's goals,” he said.
Biden requested a senior team of military, intelligence and humanitarian officials to come to Washington “in the coming days” to hear U.S. concerns and lay out an alternative approach to achieving its objectives in Rafah. Sullivan said the phone call was not adversarial and “is the natural evolution of discussion against partners.”
“We have not yet had the opportunity to have an all-encompassing, comprehensive integrated strategic discussion about how to achieve two things: One — the ultimate defeat of Hamas and two — the protection of civilians and the stabilization of Gaza in a way that will lead to the long-term security of Israel,” Sullivan said.
Washington also has “every expectation” that Israel will not proceed with operations in Rafah before the meeting, Sullivan said.
“The key goals Israel wants to achieve in Rafah can be done by other means,” he said.
Israel pushed refugees from Gaza City in the north to Khan Yunis and then into Rafah, the last place of refuge in the strip because the strip’s other cities have “largely been destroyed,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan noted that more civilians have died in this conflict than all other Israeli wars in Gaza combined. This is the fifth conflict in Gaza since Hamas rose to power in 2005. The previous four had a combined civilian death toll of roughly 3,700. The current conflict has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, a majority of which are civilians.
Sullivan said Israel is spending more energy on a ground operation in Rafah “instead of a focus on stabilizing the areas of Gaza that Israel has cleared so that Hamas does not regenerate and retake territory, allowing “anarchy” to reign.
“Our position is that Hamas should not be allowed a safe haven in Rafah or anywhere else,” Sullivan said. “But a major ground operation there would be a mistake.”
Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat, called on Biden to get tougher in dealing with Netanyahu.
“There is no safe way to evacuate nearly 1.5 million people from Rafah,” she said on Sunday. “President Biden called an invasion of Rafah a red line, and it’s time for a policy shift behind that rhetoric. We cannot continue to provide offensive military aid to Israel.”
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