(Bloomberg) — US Vice President Kamala Harris warned Israel against a major attack on the Gazan city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have sought refuge as the war against Hamas continues. While broadly in line with the Biden administration’s repeated cautions to Israel, Harris’ comments on Sunday went beyond remarks by Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his trip to the region last week.“I am ruling out nothing,” Harris said to ABC when asked whether there would be consequences for Israel for a military assault on Rafah, which borders Egypt. “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake.”
Read more: Israel Says It Will Invade Rafah No Matter What the US Says
Israel says it must send troops into Rafah because it’s the last bastion of Hamas, an Iran-backed Islamist organization. Israeli intelligence estimates there are around 5,000 to 8,000 Hamas fighters and group leaders in the city, Bloomberg has reported.
Israel Says It Will Invade Rafah No Matter What the US Says
A top Israeli official said his country’s military is ultimately going to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah and defeat Hamas “even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States.” “We are going to go in and finish this job, and anybody who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand that the existential nerve of the Jews was touched” by the Oct. 7 attack when Hamas operatives killed 1,200 and abducted 250, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said on a US podcast posted online Thursday. A close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Dermer is headed to Washington early next week to listen to concerns from the Biden administration that such an invasion would cause many more civilian casualties at a time when famine and disease are spreading in Gaza.US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the region pushing for a deal between Israel and Hamas that would lead to a six-week cease-fire and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners along with a big increase in humanitarian aid to the more than 2 million Palestinians in the coastal strip.
“We’ve been very clear — President Biden’s been very clear — that a major ground operation in Rafah would be a mistake, something we can’t support,” Blinken told reporters in Cairo Thursday evening after meeting with Arab foreign ministers. “There is no place for the many civilians who are massed in Rafah to go to get out of harm’s way, and for those that inevitably remain, it would be a humanitarian disaster.”