Israel declined to confirm or deny reports Thursday that the Biden administration had given it a “green light” for limited strikes against Hamas in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, which it had previously opposed.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned Israel against operating in Rafah, saying that there were too many civilians there. The White House has insisted Israel prepare a plan for evacuating those civilians before any attack on Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that defeating Hamas in Rafah is the key to winning — and ending — the war, because the last four Hamas battalions are stationed there, with Hamas leaders and hostages.
The Israeli government released a plan Wednesday to evacuate civilians to “humanitarian islands” near Rafah, and Politico reported that the Biden Administration had privately told Israel that it could support limited Rafah strikes.
Politico said:
Senior U.S. officials have told their Israeli counterparts the Biden administration would support Israel going after high-value Hamas targets in and underneath Rafah — as long as Israel avoids a large-scale invasion that could fracture the alliance.
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In private conversations, top administration officials have signaled to Israel that they could support a plan more akin to counterterrorism operations than all-out war, four U.S. officials said. That, the administration officials argue, would minimize civilian casualties, decimate Hamas’ ranks and avoid scenes that have led to souring public opinion on Israel’s campaign and Biden’s handling of the war.
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For months, the Biden administration has pushed Israel to consider a military plan requiring specialized, more-precise troops to fight roughly 3,000 Hamas militants in Rafah — the same number that Hamas used to attack Israel on Oct. 7. They want to avoid Israeli forces turning the city to rubble and killing many Palestinians [sic] civilians. A large-scale campaign, Biden and his top aides have said publicly, would not be acceptable.
Avy Hyman, from Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate, responded to a question from Breitbart News at a briefing on Thursday, declined to address the Politico article directly: “I’ve seen the reports that you’re referencing. Israel is a sovereign state. Israel needs to eliminate the last four Hamas battalions in Rafah. It’s a matter of time. We will destroy Hamas, we will bring home the hostages, and we will ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to the people of Israel.”
Hyman likewise declined to respond to reports that the Biden Administration intends to slap new sanctions on two geographic areas of the West Bank — which would be the first time the U.S. had done so.
“Again, I’ve seen the reports. I don’t have an official response to reports and they’re not yet policy, and I don’t know if they’ll become policy,” he said.
He added that the West Bank (known to Israelis as Judea and Samaria) is home to somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000 Israeli citizens, “the vast, vast, vast majority of whom” are “law-abiding citizens.”
“It seems a bit strange to want to take action against a tiny minority [of those] that are being dealt with by the police with the strictest of measures,” he said, likening it to “another country imposing sanctions on England because of football hooligan violence. It seems a bit strange to us.”
Hyman also noted that five Israeli Arab Muslim hostages remain in captivity in Gaza, among 134 Israeli hostages overall, and that they were being prevented from observing the holy month of Ramadan with their families in Israel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
