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The US president said he had made it clear to PM Netanyahu that if Israeli military ‘go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons’
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President Joe Biden has publicly warned Israel for the first time that the US would stop supplying it weapons if Israeli forces make a major invasion of Rafah, the last remaining city in Gaza that has not been razed in the Israeli offensive.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah ..., I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said in an interview with CNN.
A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington had carefully reviewed the delivery of weapons that might be used in Rafah and as a result paused a shipment consisting of 1,800 2,000-pound (907-kg) bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said the decision was taken out of concern for Rafah, where Washington opposes a major Israeli invasion without civilian safeguards.
An Israeli official told Reuters that Israel sees no sign of a breakthrough in Egyptian-mediated talks on a truce with Hamas that would free some Gaza hostages, but is keeping its delegation of what it describes as “mid-level” negotiators in Cairo for now.
Israel will not agree to end the war and leave Hamas in power, an Israeli government spokesperson reiterated on Wednesday.
Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip have only three days of fuel left, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, due to closed border crossings. “The closure of the border crossing continues to prevent the UN from bringing fuel. Without fuel all humanitarian operations will stop. Border closures are also impeding delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
Tedros also said al-Najjar, one of the three hospitals in Rafah, was no longer functioning due to the ongoing hostilities in the vicinity and the military operation in Rafah.
Qatar called on the international community on Wednesday to prevent a “genocide” in Rafah after Israel’s seizure of the Gaza city’s crossing with Egypt and threats of a wider assault. In a statement the Gulf state appealed “for urgent international action to prevent the city from being invaded and a crime of genocide being committed”.
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