President Joe Biden’s threat to withhold military assistance for a major operation in Rafah should not undermine Israel‘s leverage in hostage negotiations with Hamas, U.S. officials insist.
“So it is just not our assessment — based on actually being in the middle of these talks and seeing how it’s happening, and what Hamas is actually demanding and what their incentive structure actually is,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said during a Thursday press briefing. “That’s just not how we see it.”
American and Israeli officials have engaged in an increasingly open disagreement about the wisdom and ethics of Israel conducting a major military operation in Rafah, a southern Gaza city where Hamas militants and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians have sought safe haven from the larger war. Yet Biden’s public placement of conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel released a political and diplomatic melee in both countries, as the pressure to mitigate civilian casualties collided with military priorities amid negotiations to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
“What the president has done is handed a great victory to Hamas,” Sen. James Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Thursday. “It’s going to invigorate the fighting that they’re doing in Gaza. And it’s going to stop the negotiations that have been ongoing. This was a horrible mistake.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s spokesman pushed back on that narrative, arguing that Biden’s restriction is predicated on U.S. assessments that Israel has already “achieved a great number of its military objectives” and cannot expand its campaign into Rafah without causing an unacceptable number of civilian casualties.
“The Hamas battalions in northern Gaza and central Gaza have largely been defeated and have been dismantled, although clearly there is still a Hamas population that exists in all those areas,” Miller said.
While Miller credited Israel with “tak[ing] measures” to reduce the numbers of civilian deaths in the conflict, that figure “hasn’t come down enough” for the U.S. to support a campaign in a city swollen with civilians who fled the war further north.
“And you look at their track record at previous points in the operation, it leads us to believe that there would be [an] incredible civilian toll, and it’s something that we can’t support,” he said.
Hamas has refused to relinquish the hostages unless Israel agrees to end the war and withdraw from the Gaza Strip, a condition that Netanyahu has dismissed as a “delusional” demand for an Israeli capitulation. Yet U.S. officials insisted Thursday that Biden’s preemptive break with Israel over the Rafah operation would not diminish Israel’s negotiating position.
“We think the only thing that most leadership cares about is protecting themselves,” Miller said. “I’m kind of limited in what I can say here, but ultimately, when you look at the things that are on the table in the hostage deal … it just hasn’t been our assessment that that is how the negotiations have played out, at all.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior leaders signaled that they would proceed with their military plans over Biden’s objections, saying Israeli forces will “fight tooth and nail” regardless of U.S. aid restrictions.
“The IDF has armaments for the missions it is planning, including missions in Rafah,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Thursday. “We have what we need.”
U.S. officials argued that a “major military operation in Rafah” would undermine Israel’s negotiating position, as the rising civilian death toll would generate more international backlash against Israel.
“We actually think that a Rafah operation would weaken its position both in these talks and writ large,” Miller said. “A major military operation in Rafa would further weaken Israel’s standing in the world, would further create distance from its partners in the region — who actually share Israel’s goal of seeing Hamas defeated and want Hamas replaced with a different governance structure in Gaza. And also, just look at Hamas’ track record: They have never cared about Palestinian civilian lives.”
Risch argued the restriction would backfire on Biden in terms of humanitarian considerations and diplomatic factors around the region.
“This is unprecedented,” Risch said. “It’s going to be watched by our enemies. It’s going to be watched by our allies. And it is not helpful to the national security of the United States. What is the system the administration has held up? It’s the kits that make the bombs smart bombs and precision bombs instead of dumb bombs. They’re doing exactly the opposite of what they say they’re trying to do. This is simply a nod to their far-left flank. It’s trying to have a foot on each side of the fence, which it can’t do.”
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Another observer suggested that Biden is anxious to forestall a scenario in which Iran or its other terrorist proxies open a larger war in response to a Rafah operation.
“I believe he is not as concerned about Rafah as he is about Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis.” Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior vice president Jonathan Schanzer wrote Thursday. “When Israel moves in to finish off Hamas, Iran and its proxies will unleash on Israel and probably the U.S. … It’s kicking the can down the road. This war between Israel & Iran’s matrix of threats is already underway. Biden is desperately trying to hold it off.”