Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition allies demanded that Israel invade Rafah despite US President Joe Biden’s warning that Washington would cut off the supply of the large weapons the Israeli military has deployed extensively during its seven-month war with Hamas.
Extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a post on X on Thursday that “Hamas (hearts) Biden” after the US president said he would halt supplies of the massive bombs, which have already killed a large number of Palestinian civilians, if Israel invaded Rafah, the city in southern Gaza.
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”.
In a message on X, Netanyahu posted an excerpt of his speech from Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday that said: “No amount of pressure . . . will stop Israel from defending itself.”
The issue has developed into the deepest rift between a US president and Israeli prime minister since Ronald Reagan withheld weapons to slow down Israel’s offensive in Beirut in 1982. House Democrats have urged Biden for months to leverage the Jewish state’s reliance on US military assistance to shape Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in a manner that will help protect Palestinian civilians.
A political adviser to Netanyahu told the Financial Times that the Israeli military had sufficient “operational capacity to achieve its war goals”, but that the progress of the hostage negotiations would dictate the course of the next few days.
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”.
“I turn to Israel’s enemies as well as to our best of friends and say — the State of Israel cannot be subdued,” he said on Thursday.
Palestinians have reported intermittent shelling from the ongoing operation in eastern Rafah. Biden told CNN that he did not consider Israel’s current operation in the eastern areas, close to the Israeli and Egyptian borders, to cross his red line about a major offensive in the city itself.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah . . . I’m not supplying the weapons,” Biden told CNN.
More than 1mn Palestinians have sought shelter on the southern edge of Gaza, fleeing the war between Hamas and Israel. Conditions there remain dire, and have sharply worsened 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, but the so-called humanitarian zone by the Mediterranean Sea that the IDF directed them to has few resources to support an influx of displaced people, aid organisations said.
The IDF also returned overnight to the Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City, with air strikes clearing the way for the 99th Division to target Hamas infrastructure. IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told a conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night that Hamas fighters had been regrouping in northern areas of the besieged enclave ahead of Israel’s potential Rafah offensive.
Residents in Zeitoun, which had been devastated during Israel’s initial ground invasion last year, reported intense shelling and clashes, including mortar fire from Palestinian militant groups. The health ministry said at least 60 people had been killed since last night.
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.
But with the fate of those talks still uncertain, Biden publicly warned Israel that Washington would curtail its supply of weapons depending on its conduct in Rafah — a step that his administration had been unwilling to take until now.
CIA director Bill Burns is expected to visit Cairo on Thursday, the Israeli KAN radio reported, continuing talks to narrow the gaps between Hamas and Israel over the temporary ceasefire and hostage swap brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar.
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 the Jewish state launched its retaliatory offensive against the militant group, according to local health officials. Israeli authorities have said 132 hostages — both Israeli and foreign nationals — remain in captivity out of 240 taken on October 7.
The Biden administration decided to withhold the shipment last week after discussions over how Israel would meet the humanitarian needs of civilians in Rafah did not fully satisfy Washington’s concerns.
A senior US official said the process that led to the shipment pause began in April, with the Pentagon ultimately withholding 1,800 2,000lb bombs and 1,700 500lb bombs.
The most destructive US-supplied bombs in Israel’s arsenal have attracted intense international scrutiny as their use can lead to heavy civilian casualties. The US military has used 2,000lb bombs only sparingly in its recent military campaigns in the region.
“We are especially focused on the end use of the 2,000-pound bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings, as we have seen in other parts of Gaza,” the senior US official said.