The Deputy Spokesman of the US State Department, Vedant Patel, said in a press briefing on Monday, "We have been pretty clear that Rafah is an important conduit for the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza."
Addressing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's statement regarding the IDF's upcoming plans for Rafah, he added that Rafah "is an important conduit for foreign nationals, including American citizens and LPRs, to be able to safely leave Gaza. It is also somewhere where more than a million people are sheltering, and so we would want any operation being conducted in that region to take that into mind."