NewsNetanyahu's Decision on Rafah Offensive Sparks US Ire and Threatens Coalition
Netanyahu's Decision on Rafah Offensive Sparks US Ire and Threatens Coalition
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Monday evening that the Israeli Defense Forces will conduct an offensive in Rafah. He stated that its date was already set. - State Department spokesman Matthew Miller announced the USA is strongly against this operation.
"We have made clear to Israel that we think a full-scale military invasion of Rafah would have an enormously harmful effect on those civilians and that it would ultimately hurt Israel's security" said Miller.
Earlier, far-right Israeli ministers announced that if Netanyahu ends the war without attacking Rafah, he will lose his position as Prime Minister. The heads of finance and national security, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, threatened that the government would fall if there is no attack on Hamas's last stronghold in Rafah, at the very south of the Gaza Strip - reported "Haaretz" and "Jerusalem Post".
Risk of a Humanitarian Disaster
Meanwhile, the USA has been pressing Israel for months not to opt for a ground offensive in Rafah and choose a more limited military operation instead.
In March, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant against undertaking such an operation, and earlier similar messages were conveyed to the minister by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President's advisor Jake Sullivan.
Austin emphasized that the security of 1.5 million civilians in Rafah, Hamas's last stronghold, where most of the Gaza Strip's population sought refuge before the war, is "a top priority" for the USA.
This operation threatens a humanitarian disaster, both because the city has become a refuge for about a million Palestinians who fled from other areas of the Strip and because most of the humanitarian aid to the enclave comes through the border crossing with Egypt.
