Israel defiant after U.S. warns it will halt arms shipments over Rafah

TEL AVIV - Israel is ready to “stand alone” in the fight against its enemies, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Thursday, after President Biden warned that he would halt the flow of certain weapons if Israeli troops invaded Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

“If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone,” Netanyahu said in a recorded video message, without specifically mentioning the United States, Israel’s closest ally. Other Israeli officials criticized Biden directly, calling his decision “disappointing and frustrating,” and referring to the shift in U.S. policy as an “arms embargo” against Israel, the most serious public rift since the start of the war.

Israel now has “a choice … to make” on whether it will escalate in Rafah, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seized control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt this week - and its leaders have said a full-blown invasion is necessary to eliminate the last Hamas battalions in Gaza.

But for months, the Biden administration has said it would not support an operation in the city, where more than 1 million people have sought refuge, unless Israel presented a credible plan to evacuate and protect civilians in the area. The president on Wednesday said he would cut off offensive weapons shipments if the invasion goes ahead, acknowledging that U.S. munitions, including 2,000-pound bombs, have been used against civilians elsewhere in Gaza.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden said in an interview with CNN. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah - they haven’t gone in Rafah yet - if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically … to deal with the cities.”

Still, the warning took Israel by “surprise,” former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror said, and would probably force its war cabinet to reconsider its options in Rafah. Israel must decide, he said, “if it will bear the consequence of going in without American support, or if it will stop the operation, which will allow Hamas to be unharmed in the area.”

U.S. officials said they doubt a hold on munitions would render Israel incapable of a full-scale invasion. They said they believe the IDF already has the munitions and equipment they need to pursue the maximalist operation in Rafah that the White House is trying to avoid.

On Thursday, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military “has the necessary weapons for its planned maneuvers, including in Rafah.”

He said the United States has supported the military in an “unprecedented way” since the start of the war, adding that previous disagreements between the two sides were dealt with “behind closed doors.”

The cutoff, U.S. officials said, is about conveying the gravity of U.S. concerns and making clear that the White House cannot condone an operation it believes will have disastrous consequences for civilians in the territory.

“Even when Israel has taken additional steps to minimize civilian harm, we have still seen results where far too many civilians were dying,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Thursday.

More than 34,000 people have been killed in the hostilities in Gaza, according the local health ministry. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of those killed are women and children.

The war started Oct. 7 after Hamas-led militants stormed Israeli communities near the border, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 250 others. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for 17 years, and to free the hostages, some of whom have since been killed.

On a tactical level, Israel could keep fighting in Gaza without immediate U.S. support, Amidror said, but a move to cut off offensive weapons could “harm Israeli military readiness in the long term.”

“Any pressure on Israel, any limitations on it, even from close allies who care for our interests, are being interpreted by our enemies … as something that gives them hope,” Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said Thursday in an interview with Israeli public radio.

But in a briefing with reporters, Kirby said the United States has offered Israel “alternatives” to the kind of operations that it has conducted elsewhere in Gaza, including helping to make sure the border between Gaza and Egypt can’t be used for smuggling weapons to Hamas, as well as intelligence assistance in targeting Hamas leaders, providing more humanitarian aid and working toward standing up “an alternative governance structure.”

The United States has repeatedly asked Israel to ramp up aid to the enclave, where much of the population is facing mass starvation. In the north, a “full-blown famine” is underway, the World Food Program said last week.

Israel’s incursion into parts of Rafah this week closed the crossing and nearby Kerem Shalom, the main entry points for aid into southern Gaza. It also ordered 100,000 people to evacuate neighborhoods east of Rafah, and as of Thursday, about 80,000 people had left the area, said UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Aid agencies warned of catastrophic humanitarian consequences if the crossings remain closed and the operation goes ahead.

The Israeli military said dozens of aid trucks passed through Kerem Shalom - but both U.N. and U.S. officials said they were not, in fact, going through. A WFP spokeswoman said none of the agency’s trucks had entered Gaza through Kerem Shalom since Monday, a day after a Hamas attack killed four Israeli soldiers, according to the IDF.

“It is currently a militarized zone, roads are unsafe, security accidents have affected commercial transporters, and additionally - there is a lack of fuel to be able to move the aid inside Gaza,” WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa said.

The U.S. military is building a floating pier off Gaza’s coast to handle some aid deliveries and will pilot vessels bringing the aid ashore, after which the United Nations will distribute the relief.

On Thursday, the first ship bound for the pier, which has yet to be installed, departed from Cyprus. According to the IDF, Hamas on Wednesday fired mortar shells toward the site.

At the same time, negotiations to halt the fighting and free hostages still in captivity in Gaza were stalled Thursday. The latest round of talks in Cairo ended without a breakthrough.

Hamas said it was sending its delegation back to the Qatari capital, Doha, but that it remained committed to the cease-fire proposal it was presented with last week. Israel has said the proposal Hamas agreed to differed from the version its officials reviewed. An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the Israeli team left Cairo on Thursday evening.

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Birnbaum and DeYoung reported from Washington. Hazem Balousha and Claire Parker in Cairo contributed to this report.