The Israeli military is now operating in central Rafah, pushing closer to President Joe Biden’s red line.
Israel’s operations began in Rafah on May 6 and have slowly progressed to other portions of the city. The military announced Wednesday it had gained operational control of the area along the Gaza-Egyptian border known as the Philadephi Corridor.
“IDF troops in central Rafah located Hamas rocket launchers, terror tunnel shafts, and weapons. The troops also dismantled a Hamas weapons storage facility in the area,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
Israeli leaders have frequently repeated the need for its forces to conduct operations in Rafah because it is Hamas’s last remaining stronghold in the enclave, valuable to Hamas’s smuggling efforts in its tunnel systems and essential to ensure the lasting defeat of Hamas, and Hamas is holding Israeli hostages in Rafah.
Several international leaders, including President Joe Biden, have urged Israel against going ahead with military operations in Rafah due to concerns that it could lead to grave civilian casualties. More than a million Palestinians fled to Rafah over the course of the war as Israeli forces operated in central and southern Gaza, and a significant portion of them have fled from Rafah now.
There are believed to be around 300,000 people still in Rafah, some of them in the central parts of the city, a United Nations official said, according to the Associated Press.
Biden warned on May 8 that the United States would withhold offensive military aid to Israel if it began attacks on “population centers,” while U.S. officials have repeatedly said the administration does not support a full-scale ground invasion.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby described it as “thousands and thousands of troops moving in a maneuvered, concentrated, coordinated way against a variety of targets on the ground.”
Last weekend, Israel carried out an airstrike targeting two Hamas leaders in Rafah, but the strike caused a subsequent explosion and fire, resulting in another 45 deaths. Israel said it had been a precise strike, but the dozens of civilian casualties underscore the difficulties of urban combat.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the strike as one that had “unintended but horrific consequences of military action in a place where the people you’re going after are so closely embedded with civilians.”
Kirby said the strike did not cross the administration’s red line despite the high civilian casualty count, though Vice President Kamala Harris said of the incident on Tuesday, “The word tragic doesn’t even begin to describe it.”