The Biden administration does support Israeli forces going into the southern Gaza city of Rafah as long as their strategy accounts for the significant civilian population that has relocated there.
Leaders from the United States, United Kingdom, and United Nations, among others, have raised concerns about Israel’s intent to go into Rafah, which is now home to roughly 1.3 million Palestinians who evacuated from the northern part of the enclave. But a U.S. administration official clarified on Monday that it supports Israel’s effort to capture or kill senior Hamas leaders who migrated south as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of the civilian population.
“There are legitimate military targets that the Israelis are going to want to go after in Rafah,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Monday.
Israeli forces entered Gaza and initially focused on the north before turning their attention to the central part of the strip and gradually working their way south. As Israeli troops went south, so did Hamas fighters and leaders to avoid detection, according to the White House.
“We do know that Hamas leadership and fighters migrated south. They got pressured in the north, so they went down to Khan Yunis,” he said. “Of course, they were already in Khan Yunis, but they kind of congregated there. And then, as the Israelis pressured on them in Khan Yunis, they gravitated further south.”
Israeli leaders have said they will not be able to achieve their goal of demilitarizing and removing Hamas from power without going into Rafah. But it’s unclear where the more than 1 million Palestinians who have fled at Israel’s insistence will be allowed to go.
Rafah is the southernmost major city in Gaza, and fleeing civilians have only gone south because Israeli forces have not let them return to the north yet, hence the international concerns surrounding possible Israeli operations there.
Conservative Israeli politicians have expressed an interest in incentivizing Palestinians to leave Gaza, but the U.S. and other Arab governments have explicitly condemned the possible forced displacement of the Palestinians.
“We never said that they can’t go into Rafah to remove Hamas,” Kirby added. “Hamas remains a viable threat to the Israeli people, and the Israelis in the IDF absolutely are going to continue operations against their leadership and their infrastructure as they should. We don’t want to see another Oct. 7. What we’ve said is that we don’t believe that it’s advisable to go in a major way in Rafah without a proper, executable, effective, and credible plan for the safety of the more than a million Palestinians that are taking refuge in Rafah.”
Israeli forces rescued two of the more than 130 hostages in Hamas’s custody in Rafah early on Monday, and the operation included airstrikes that reportedly killed dozens of Palestinians.
Hamas has long sought to embed itself within and underneath, with its widespread tunnel infrastructure, the densely populated areas of Gaza, with the intent of using those civilians to protect themselves from Israeli forces.
While the Biden administration remains largely supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that resulted in the murders of roughly 1,200 people, it has criticized Israel for the staggering death toll.
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But in a rare moment of public criticism, President Joe Biden acknowledged last week that Israel’s response had been “over the top.”
The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry has said that more than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed in the roughly four months of war, though that total does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend that about half of the Palestinians killed have been combatants, though his comments could not be independently verified.
