Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that Israel will “stand alone” in a defiant message after Joe Biden warned that the US would not supply weapons for a potential invasion of Rafah in the Gaza strip.
As negotiations for a hostage deal and ceasefire appeared to falter, the rift deepened between Israel and its most important ally, with a series of Netanyahu’s ministers attacking the US president’s stance.
On Thursday evening the Israeli prime minister posted a video in which he appeared to rebuff Biden’s warning, declaring: “If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone.”
“I already said that if we have to, we will fight with our fingernails,” Netanyahu added in the video on social media site X. “But we have much more than fingernails, and with the same greatness of mind, God willing, together we will win.”
Netanyahu’s combative message, without mentioning the US by name, came a day after Biden said the US, Israel’s largest arms supplier, would not provide weaponry for a full-scale offensive in Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where more than 1mn Palestinians have fled.
Earlier on Thursday, extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote on X that “Hamas ♥️ Biden”. Israel believes Hamas militants are hiding in Rafah after Israeli forces laid waste to much of the rest of the Palestinian enclave.
Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, said the military operation, currently poised on the eastern fringes of Rafah, “must continue . . . until victory, despite, and to a certain extent precisely because of, the opposition of the Biden administration and stopping of arms shipments”.
Also on Thursday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that CIA director Bill Burns was returning to the US after ceasefire and hostage deal talks in the region again failed to produce a breakthrough. He was leaving Cairo even as the US continued to believe that “gaps could have been closed”, Kirby said.
House Democrats have urged Biden for months to leverage Israel’s reliance on US military assistance to shape its offensive in Gaza to help protect Palestinian civilians.
Israel has maintained that any US block on weapons shipments will provide little obstacle to its operations on the ground for the time being. A political adviser to Netanyahu told the Financial Times the Israeli military had sufficient “operational capacity to achieve its war goals”.
Defence minister Yoav Gallant, who voted alongside a unanimous war cabinet over the weekend to authorise the eastern Rafah operation, said the military would “do whatever is necessary in order to defend the citizens of Israel”.
Another war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, said that “Israel has a security and moral obligation to continue fighting to return our hostages and remove the threat of Hamas . . . and the US has a moral and strategic obligation to provide Israel with the tools required for this mission.”
Palestinians have reported intermittent shelling from Israel’s operation in eastern Rafah. Biden told CNN on Wednesday that he did not consider Israel’s current operation to have crossed his red line concerning a major offensive in the city.
Conditions in Rafah remain dire, and have worsened sharply since Israeli troops took control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, cutting off a major conduit for humanitarian aid.
Tens of thousands fled after an evacuation order by the Israel Defense Forces on Sunday. However aid organisations said the so-called humanitarian zone by the Mediterranean Sea to which they were directed by the IDF has few resources to support an influx of displaced people.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told a conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday that Hamas fighters had been regrouping in northern areas of the besieged enclave ahead of Israel’s potential Rafah offensive.
The US has opposed Israel’s plans for an assault on Rafah, hoping instead to help broker a deal with Hamas to free hostages held in Gaza and reach a ceasefire lasting at least six weeks.
Kirby said on Thursday that the US believed a Rafah operation would benefit Hamas in hostage negotiations. “Our view is that any kind of major Rafah ground operation would actually strengthen Hamas’s hand at the negotiating table,” he said.
“If I’m Mr. [Yahya] Sinwar [the leader of Hamas in Gaza] and I’m sitting down in my tunnel . . . and I’m seeing innocent people falling victim to major significant combat operations in Rafah then I have less and less incentive to want to come to the negotiating table . . . I can cast Israel in the worst possible way.”
In In his video on Thursday, however, Netanyahu evoked Israel’s foundation, saying: “In the war of independence 76 years ago, we were few against many. We had no weapons, there was an arms embargo on Israel, but with the greatness of spirit, bravery and unity among us — we won . . . Today we are much stronger.”
Israel sent ground troops into eastern Rafah on Monday morning, seizing the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. It has threatened to expand the operation in a city it calls Hamas’s last significant stronghold.
The pause in arms supplies marks the first reported occasion that the US has held up a potential weapons delivery since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.
Almost 35,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its retaliatory offensive against the militant group, according to local health officials.
Israeli authorities have said 132 hostages remain in captivity, including four people taken hostage before the October 7 attack.
The Biden administration withheld a shipment of weapons last week after discussions over how Israel would meet the humanitarian needs of civilians in Rafah did not fully satisfy Washington’s concerns.
David Turner is a globe-trotting journalist who brings a global perspective to our readers. With a commitment to shedding light on international events, he explores complex geopolitical issues, offering a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
