Biden warns: I won't send Israel arms for Rafah operation

US President Joe Biden warned Israel, for the first time, that he’d halt US weapons shipments earmarked for Gaza if the IDF embarks on a major military operation against Hamas in Rafah.

“I’ve made it clear that if they [Israel] go into Rafah… I’m not supplying the weapons that have historically been used to deal with Rafah,” Biden told CNN while campaigning in Wisconsin for reelection in November.

Earlier in the day US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate Appropriations Committee the US had already paused one shipment to Israel of payload munitions due to concerns over Rafah.

“We’ve held up one shipment,” Biden explained to CNN.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they [Israel] go after population centers” in Gaza, Biden stressed to CNN.

Securing Israeli security while denying munitions

He underscored the US commitment to Israel’s security pointing to the unprecedented maneuver last month, in which the armies of America, Jordan, Great Britain, France, and Israel worked together to defend the Jewish state from an Iranian drone and missile attack.

“We are going to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks like [the one that] came out in the Middle East recently.”

“We’re not walking away from Israel’s security. We’ve walked away from its ability to make war in those areas [Rafah],” he stated.

Rafah is creating problems, says Biden

Biden said that what Israel has done so far in Rafah does not constitute a major military operation in that southern part of the enclave.

However, what the IDF has done in Rafah, he said, has created problems with neighboring Egypt, he explained.

The US has argued since November that Israel has not done enough to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza.  For months, officials across Biden’s administration at the State Department and Pentagon have held meetings and phone calls pleading with their Israeli counterparts to take a more targeted approach in Gaza.

It has been particularly opposed to a Rafah operation, which the US fears would create a humanitarian catastrophe because over 1.3 million Palestinians are located in that area, many of whom fled there in the early stages of the war to escape bombing in the north.

Biden told CNN that he opposed the violent nature of the protests on US campuses against the Gaza war, particularly the manner in which it targets Jewish students.

“There’s a legitimate right to free speech and protest,” Biden said, adding that the students, “have a right to do that.” He stressed, however, that “there’s not a legitimate right to use hate speech” or to “threaten Jewish students” or block their access to class.

“That’s against the law. It’s against the law” he said.

He described those actions as antisemitic and deplored its occurrence seven decades after the Holocaust.

Everyone has forgotten October 7, Biden said, as he referred to the Hamas attack against Israel in which over 1,200 people were killed and another 252 kidnapped.

He recalled one horrific story from that day in which Palestinian terrorists had roped a mother and daughter together and set them on fire.

Biden said that in response he had visited Israel in October and even then had warned it not to make the same mistakes the US had made in Iraq and Afghanistan after the Al Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

“We wanted to get [Osama] bin Laden and we’ll help you get [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar. It made sense to go get Bin Laden, but it made no sense to try to unify Afghanistan,” he stressed.

Biden spoke of the importance of focusing on the day after the Gaza war when Hamas would no longer control the enclave but offered no suggestion as to how to oust Hamas from the Gaza Strip.

“We’ve got to think through what is happening in Gaza after this is over. I’ve been working with Arab states. I won’t mention them because I don’t want to get them in trouble.

“But five leaders are prepared to help rebuild Gaza, are prepared to help transition it to a two-state solution... to maintain the security and peace while they’re working to ensure [the establishment of a] Palestinian Authority is real and not corrupt.”