Biden says U.S. won’t supply Israel weapons for Rafah attack
U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he would not supply offensive weapons that Israel could use to launch an all-out assault on Rafah — the last major Hamas stronghold in Gaza — over concern for the well-being of the more than 1 million civilians sheltering there.
Biden, in an interview with CNN, said the U.S. was still committed to Israel’s defense and would supply Iron Dome rocket interceptors and other defensive arms, but that if Israel goes into Rafah, “we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells used, that have been used.”
Gaza crisis: Hamas accepts ceasefire deal as Israeli invasion looms
Austin told the Senate hearing that Israel had to be more precise and the type of weapons used in a heavily populated area mattered.
Story continues below advertisement
A “small-diameter bomb, which is a precision weapon, it’s very useful in a dense, built-up environment… but maybe not so much a 2,000-pound bomb that could create a lot of collateral damage,” Austin said.
Israeli troops on Tuesday seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing in what the White House described as a limited operation that stopped short of the full-on Israeli invasion of the city that Biden has repeatedly warned against on humanitarian grounds, most recently in a Monday call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of 100,000 Palestinians from the city. Israeli forces have also carried out what it describes as “targeted strikes” on the eastern part of Rafah and captured the Rafah crossing, a critical conduit for the flow of humanitarian aid along the Gaza-Egypt border.
