Biden warns Netanyahu that an attack on Rafah would increase “anarchy” in Gaza |

The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a military operation like the one Israel plans in Rafah would increase “anarchy” in Gaza, according to the House National Security Advisor. Blanca, Jake Sullivan. Both leaders spoke by phone for 45 minutes, at the moment of greatest tension between the two governments in the more than five months of war in the Strip, due to disagreements over humanitarian aid and the management of the conflict. The conversation occurred after the highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Charles Schumer, described Netanyahu as an “obstacle to peace,” said that “he has lost his way” and called for early elections in the allied country.

“More innocent civilians, including thousands of children, have died in this conflict, in this military operation, than in all previous wars in Gaza combined. A humanitarian crisis has taken over the Strip, and anarchy reigns in the areas that Israeli forces have taken, but not stabilized,” said the national security advisor when reporting the content of the conversation. “A major military operation on the ground would be a mistake. “It would lead to more deaths of innocent civilians, aggravate the already catastrophic humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza and further isolate Israel internationally.” The conversation took place as the World Food Fund warned of an “imminent” famine in northern Gaza.

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The call, which had not been announced in the US president’s official program for this Monday, was the first since February 15. Since then, the statements of both allies have revealed an increasingly deep schism, as the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza has worsened and in the United States the primary elections have revealed the discomfort of a part of Democratic voters. towards the Biden Administration’s support for Israel in the war.

Among the practical results of the talk – carried out in a “professional” tone, according to Sullivan – Israel will send a delegation to Washington to listen to the US Government’s concerns about the invasion that Israel plans against Rafah and analyze alternative plans to dismantle the Hamas militia that do not involve an assault on that city, the last refuge for more than a million Palestinians. The Israeli team will travel at the end of this week or at the beginning of next week, according to the senior American official.

Sullivan has confirmed the death of Hamas’s “number three”, Marwan Issa, in the Israeli offensive, in which “thousands” of guerrillas from the radical Palestinian militia have also died. Issa “died in an Israeli operation last week. The other senior officials are hidden, probably deep in the Hamas tunnel network,” he indicated.

Netanyahu has limited himself to broadcasting a 24-second video in Hebrew in which he seems to justify – especially in the face of sectors in the country in favor of further limiting the entry of food – the importance of meeting the demands of the White House. In the recording, he assures that he expressed to Biden Israel’s “commitment to achieving all the objectives of the war: eliminating Hamas, bringing back the hostages” and ensuring “that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel, while providing the necessary humanitarian aid to help meet those objectives.”

Biden and Netanyahu have addressed “the latest developments in Israel and Gaza, including the situation in Rafah and efforts to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza,” the US presidential office has indicated. Rafah, on the border with Egypt, is the last area that the Israeli army has not yet invaded and concentrates in deplorable conditions more than half of the 2.3 million Gazans, forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister has not mentioned Rafah in his video message, although the day before he insisted that his army will invade it and that “it will take several weeks.” “Those who say that the performance in Rafah will not take place are the same ones who said that we would not enter Gaza, we would not perform in [el hospital Al] Shifa o en [la ciudad de] Khan Yunis, and we would not resume combat after the truce” at the end of November. Washington demands a “credible” protection plan for the 1.4 million Palestinian civilians sheltered there and Biden has warned that an indiscriminate Israeli attack on Rafah would mean crossing a “red line.”

Discomfort

The unrest between the two governments has been further aggravated by Schumer’s speech. In it, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate – and the highest-ranking Jew in the American political hierarchy – called for elections to replace Netanyahu and warned of the risk of Israel becoming an “international pariah,” in the face of criticism. increasing pressure from the international community to its conduct in the war. A day later, Biden praised the senator’s words as “a good speech” that expressed the “concerns not only of him, but of many Americans,” although he did not join the call for new elections.

These statements by Biden were added to a series in which he has increasingly expressed his discontent with Israel’s management of the war. The president has declared that Israel “has gone too far” in its offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed. He has insisted that the humanitarian aid entering Gaza by land is completely “insufficient,” and has announced that American soldiers will build an artificial port to facilitate the entry by sea of ​​food and basic necessities to the strip. In a comment captured by an open microphone two weeks ago, he pointed out that he had a pending conversation with Netanyahu with his pants off.

The prime minister responded angrily this weekend that Israel “is not a banana republic” and described the senator’s speech as “totally inappropriate.” “Trying to replace the elected leaders of a sister democracy, of a firm ally, is always wrong, but especially if it is in the middle of a war,” he criticized in an interview with the American conservative television channel Fox News.

This Monday, hours before the telephone conversation, the Israeli army had once again invaded the largest hospital in Gaza, Al Shifa, one of the few functioning centers in the north of the Strip. The Armed Forces have reported the “elimination of 20 terrorists.” The Ministry of Health of the Hamas Government has reported deaths and injuries, without specifying, and specified that the facilities house some 30,000 people, including displaced people by the war, the sick and medical personnel, who do not dare to move for fear of the snipers.

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