The White House expects Israel to hold off on a ground invasion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah until after top advisers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet with U.S. officials in a rescheduled meeting at a time yet to be determined.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi planned to travel to the United States for meetings with administration officials about alternatives to full-scale operations in Rafah, but Netanyahu opted to cancel the meeting on Monday following the U.S.’s abstention in a U.N. Security Council resolution regarding the war that ultimately passed.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that the U.S. and Israel are in talks to reschedule the canceled meeting, while National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that they expect Israel to hold off on a ground invasion of Rafah until after the meeting.
Both sides are still conferring about when the meeting will take place and whether it will be in-person as initially planned.
“The tone throughout here has been businesslike, and it’s been professional, and we expect that it’s going to stay that way. We’re hoping that this meeting can be scheduled in-person, here in Washington, as was the original plan. That’s the plan that we’re still working on now,” Kirby said. “But again, no final date.”
The U.S. does not want Israel to carry out full-scale operations in Rafah because more than one million people have fled to this city that’s located along the Gaza-Egyptian border. Over the course of Israel’s ground operations in Gaza, they started in the northern part of the strip and slowly moved south as they completed operations.
As a result, more than a million Palestinians have fled to Rafah, the southernmost part of the strip, who would be at risk if Israel engaged in full-scale military operations there without accounting for them.
Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu, have repeatedly said they have to carry out an invasion of Rafah because it’s the last remaining location for them to target Hamas. They have also said they intend to safeguard the civilians in Rafah but have not explained how they intend to do that and where the Palestinian civilians would go.
U.S. officials have said the administration supports their efforts to go after Hamas in Rafah but thinks Israel can meet their objectives without a ground operation. The U.S. hopes to convince Israel of its stance, which is why President Joe Biden sought the meeting during his most recent conversation with Netanyahu.
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“There are ideas that relate to sequencing, their ideas that relate to the prioritization of humanitarian assistance getting in and civilians pulling out, there are ideas that relate to communication between Israel and Egypt, and that relate to ensuring the Egypt-Gaza border is secure and not a source of smuggling of terrorists out or weapons into Gaza, then there are ideas relating to the precision targeting of Hamas,” a senior U.S. defense official said earlier this week.
The Biden administration has repeatedly urged Israel to do more to protect civilians in their operations, especially given Hamas’s intent to surround itself within civilian populations. The death toll in Gaza since the start of the war exceeds 32,000, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.