US President Joe Biden said Wednesday that his administration will not support Israel or provide it with offensive weapons if it launches an offensive against Hamas in populated parts of Rafah.

“I’ve made it clear to Bibi (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and the war cabinet: They’re not going to get our support if they go [into] these population centers,” Biden told CNN.

The interview marked Biden’s toughest public comments yet on the matter, as concern has grown in the administration that Israel is not planning to heed US warnings against a major offensive that it feels wouldn’t take into account the over one million Palestinians sheltering in Gaza’s southernmost city.

The remarks also appeared to amount to a threat by Biden to make permanent the hold his administration placed last week on a transfer of 2,000 and 500-pound bombs to Israel over concerns that they could be used by the IDF in densely populated Rafah, as they have in other parts of Gaza.

Asked specifically”have those bombs been used to kill civilians in Gaza,” Biden responded they had. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which [Israel] goes after population centers,” he said, without elaborating on the strikes in which they were killed.

“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, to deal with that problem,” Biden said, maintaining that the operation launched by the IDF earlier this week was limited to the Rafah border crossing, even though “it’s causing problems with (bordering) Egypt.”

“But it’s just wrong. We’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells,” Biden asserted.

He clarified that the US will continue supplying Israel with Iron Dome missile interceptors and other defensive weapons to ensure that Jerusalem can respond to attacks from adversaries across the region, such as last month’s massive missile and drone barrage from Iran.

“We’re not walking away from Israel’s security. We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in [populated] areas,” he said.

Asked if Israel has crossed his red line regarding its conduct in Gaza, Biden responded “Not yet,” but indicated Jerusalem was as close as it has ever come following last week’s weapons shipment holdup.

Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have said an offensive in Rafah is necessary to win the war against Hamas, which was triggered by the terror group’s October 7 onslaught. According to Israeli defense officials, four of Hamas’s six remaining battalions are in Rafah, along with members of the terror group’s leadership and a significant number of the hostages it abducted from Israel.

The US administration has sought to advance alternatives for “smashing into Rafah,” specifically proposing that Israel coordinate with Egypt to choke off Hamas’s underground weapons supply from the Sinai and carry out more targeted strikes against the terror group’s leadership that don’t place as many civilians at risk.

A US official speaking to The Times of Israel Wednesday said Netanyahu was turning a Rafah operation into an all-or-nothing political campaign. The official claimed this was an extension of the approach Israel has used thus far throughout the war, in which it has tried to defeat Hamas only through military means, only to find the terror group resurfacing in areas already cleared by the IDF.

The Wednesday warning from Biden was particularly remarkable, given that he pledged during his 2020 presidential campaign that he would not place conditions on US aid to Israel, “given the serious threats that Israelis face.” Just five months ago, he pushed back on calls from progressives to take this tougher approach, arguing that privately counseling Netanyahu would be more effective than issuing public threats.

A senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel earlier this week that the recent pressure Biden has placed on Israel risks encouraging Hamas to buck compromise proposals in the ongoing hostage negotiations.

But the US official responded by highlighting the ever-climbing casualty count in Gaza. Hamas’s health ministry puts the death toll near 35,000, though the figure hasn’t been verified and doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, while including civilians killed by terrorists’ errant rocket fire.

The US official acknowledged the difficulty Israel faces fighting an enemy that embeds itself deep within civilian populations after massacring some 1,200 people and taking 252 hostage on October 7.

But the Biden administration has given Jerusalem seven months of unconditional support and cannot maintain the same policy, the US official said, citing the massive civilian cost in Gaza and the destabilizing nature the war has had on the region. The official clarified that this does not change Washington’s commitment to secure a truce deal that would see the release of the remaining 132 hostages.

The US official denied that Biden’s hardened approach was motivated by political consideration.

In the CNN interview, Biden said he “absolutely” has heard the message being shouted against his Israel policy at campus protests across the country.

But he then appeared to begin an argument that the anti-Israel campus protests are not as representative as some might assume given the commotion they’ve caused and the vast media attention they’ve received. A poll published Tuesday on the Axios news site revealed that an overwhelming majority of US university students aren’t participating in the anti-Israel campus protests that have swept the country and beyond, and don’t believe the Israel-Hamas war is a top issue for them.

“If you look at the data, these demonstrations are real, but they’re not nearly as… ” Biden said before shifting his response to reference the speech he gave earlier this week condemning the antisemitic undertones of the campus protests.

“There’s a legitimate right to free speech and protest… There’s not a legitimate right to use hate speech; there’s not a legitimate right to threaten Jewish students; there’s not a legitimate right to block people’s access to class. That’s against the law,” he said, reiterating points he made in a pair of speeches earlier this month.

“I made a speech on Holocaust Day and pointed out that it took seven decades to get to the place where after the Holocaust occurred, and there’s still antisemitism. Look what’s happened in seven [months]… Everybody’s sort of forgotten about what happened in Israel. Those 1,200 young kids murdered. I saw pictures… [of] a mother and her daughter being roped together and then kerosene poured and burned to death. Nothing like this has happened to the Jewish community since the Holocaust,” he said.

Biden later urged Netanyahu to plan for who will govern Gaza after the war, highlighting a bitter point of contention between the US and the premier, who has refused to hold substantive cabinet discussions on the matter due to concerns they could collapse his coalition.

Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners have called for Israel to permanently occupy Gaza and re-establish settlements in the Palestinian territory. The premier has signaled his opposition to these steps but has been criticized for blocking clear alternatives to Hamas’s rule, such as a reformed Palestinian Authority, leaving US officials concerned that Gaza will either remain in Hamas’s hands or will be governed by anarchy.

“We’ve got to think through what is happening after this is over [in Gaza]. Who is going to occupy Gaza?” Biden asked.

He then described the US post-war vision, saying he has the support of five Arab states but declined to name them “because I don’t want to get them in trouble.”

The president appears to be referring to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Qatar, whose leaders have held several summits along with representatives from the Palestinian Authority aimed at crafting a regional peace plan that can be implemented after the war. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has held several joint meetings with his counterparts from those five countries.

Biden revealed that the leaders of those five Arab countries “are prepared to help rebuild Gaza, prepared to help transition to a two-state solution… to maintain the security and peace while they’re working out a Palestinian Authority that’s real and not corrupt.”

The countries have all clarified that any financial or military assistance that they’ll provide to help revive Gaza after the war will be conditioned on Israel agreeing to create a pathway for an eventual two-state solution — something that Netanyahu has rejected out of hand.

Biden said he told Netanyahu shortly after October 7, “We’ll help you get Sinwar.”

“We will help you focus on getting the bad guys,” Biden recalled having told Netanyahu during his visit to Israel less than two-weeks after Hamas’s terror onslaught.

Biden then repeated the rest of the message he gave to Israeli leaders then — one he has previously shared publicly.

“When I went over [to Israel] immediately after that happened, I said to Bibi, ‘Don’t make the same mistake we made in America [after 9/11],” he said, lamenting what he characterized as US missteps in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Biden’s interview was hailed by progressive Democrats who have urged him to take this approach for months, while Republicans fumed.

“Netanyahu should not have gotten a nickel so long as he continued this incredibly destructive war. I’m glad to see that the president is beginning to move in that direction,” Senator Bernie Sanders told CNN.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah tweeted, “We stand by allies, we don’t second guess them. Biden’s dithering on Israel weapons is bad policy and a terrible message to Israel, our allies and the world.”

Shortly before the interview, US House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell penned a joint letter to Biden blasting his decision last week to hold up the weapons transfer to Israel, saying the move “flies in the face of assurances provided regarding the timely delivery of security assistance to Israel.”

Biden signed off on the pause in an order conveyed last week to the Pentagon, according to US officials who were not authorized to comment on the matter. The White House National Security Council sought to keep the decision out of the public eye for several days until it had a better understanding of the scope of Israel’s intensified military operations in Rafah and until Biden could deliver a long-planned speech on Tuesday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In a joint letter sent to Biden, the top Republican lawmakers noted the move will not impact the billions in military aid to Israel recently passed by Congress but said “security assistance to Israel is an urgent priority that must not be delayed.”

“These recent press reports and pauses in critical weapons shipments call into question your pledge that your commitment to Israel’s security will remain ironclad,” the two wrote.