Feb. 9 (UPI) — The United States said it opposes a planned Israeli military offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah that does not make adequate provision to protect more than a million displaced civilians amassed there from harm.
Responding to the announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the military had been instructed to prepare for a ground offensive on what he called “Hamas’ last bastion,” the administration warned Thursday that such an operation without serious planning to safeguard civilians would be “a disaster.”
“More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in and around Rafah. That’s where they were told to go. There’s a lot of displaced people there,” National Security spokesman John Kirby told a press briefing in Washington.
“The Israeli military has a special obligation to make sure that they’re factoring in protection for innocent civilian life, particularly, you know, the civilians that were pushed into southern Gaza by operations further north in Khan Younis and North Gaza.
“Absent any full consideration of protecting civilians at that scale in Gaza — military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support,” said Kirby.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday evening, U.S. President Joe Biden added his voice to that of his officials saying “[Israel’s] conduct of the response in the Gaza strip has been over the top,” although he did not mention Rafah specifically.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Tel Aviv where he had meeting government officials regarding a cease-fire proposal, said any “military operation that Israel undertakes needs to put civilians first and foremost in mind and that’s especially true in the case of Rafah”.
The population of Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt, has been swelled five-fold to more than 1.4 million as people have fled further and further south to escape the fighting, the majority of them living in tents.
Western districts of the city were hit heavily by airstrikes and tank fire from Israeli forces on Thursday morning killing at least 13 people, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry — but no indications of an all-out offensive as yet.
