{"id":27817,"date":"2024-05-29T21:05:59","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T02:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=27817"},"modified":"2024-05-31T02:46:11","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T07:46:11","slug":"white-house-says-israels-rafah-strike-and-ground-assault-dont-cross-bidens-red-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=27817","title":{"rendered":"White House says Israel’s Rafah strike and ground assault don’t cross Biden’s ‘red line’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Israeli forces pushed deeper into Rafah <\/a>just days after an airstrike sparked a major fire that killed dozens<\/a> of Palestinians, the White House said that its ally had <\/strong>not crossed the Biden administration\u2019s \u201cred line.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israeli tanks were seen entering central Rafah for the first time Tuesday, as global condemnation mounted over the deaths in a crowded tent camp for displaced civilians and as U.S. aid deliveries to Gaza by sea were suspended<\/a> after damage to its temporary pier. And on Wednesday, the country’s national security adviser said he expected the war to continue through the end of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a briefing that the U.S. was not turning a \u201cblind eye\u201d to Israel\u2019s operations in the southern Gaza city, from which around 1 million Palestinians have fled in recent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the Biden administration did not believe Israel\u2019s actions in Rafah so far represented a \u201cmajor ground operation\u201d that would violate President Joe Biden\u2019s warnings and trigger a change in U.S. policy, including a threatened halt to weapons shipments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA major ground operation is, you know, thousands and thousands of troops moving in a maneuvered, concentrated, coordinated way against a variety of targets on the ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A U.S. official similarly told NBC News that while America believed the deadly strike was a \u201chorrific incident,\u201d it appeared to be the result of an airstrike gone \u201chorribly wrong\u201d and didn\u2019t represent Israel \u201csmashing into Rafah.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden told CNN earlier this month: \u201cI made it clear that if they go into Rafah \u2014 they haven\u2019t gone in Rafah yet \u2014 if they go into Rafah, I\u2019m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities \u2014 that deal with that problem.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked by NBC News\u2019 Gabe Gutierrez how Israeli tanks appearing to near central Gaza did not represent a full-scale ground operation, Kirby said Israeli officials had maintained that their tanks were moving along the Philadelphi Corridor, a key strategic strip of land running along the Egypt-Gaza border, <\/strong>and \u201cnot in the town proper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what the Israelis have said,\u201d Kirby responded. \u201cWe\u2019re going based on what the Israelis are telling us and what they\u2019re saying publicly and what we\u2019re able to discern, as best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirby’s comments came just days after the Israeli airstrike sparked the fire that tore through the tent camp in Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, killing at least 45 people including children, according to local health officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hala Rharrit, a U.S. diplomat and veteran foreign service officer who resigned from the State Department last month<\/a> in protest over Washington\u2019s policy on Israel\u2019s war in Gaza, said she felt the Biden administration was now trying to \u201cwiggle their way out of this latest shift\u201d on what constitutes a \u201cred line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe point of the president saying population centers were a \u2018red line\u2019 is to avoid mass civilian casualties,\u201d she said in a phone interview with NBC News on Wednesday. \u201cWhether they\u2019re going in by tanks or it\u2019s happening via bombs coming from the air, are we really trying to mince words?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attack on the tent camp has added to growing international pressure after the United Nations\u2019 top court ordered Israel to halt <\/a>its offensive in Rafah. The U.N. Security Council could vote as early as Wednesday on a draft resolution circulated by Algeria ordering Israel to immediately stop its offensive and demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, according to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel submitted a new cease-fire proposal to Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators Monday, an Israeli official told NBC News. The proposal offered a \u201csustainable calm\u201d but not a complete end to the war as demanded by Hamas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told NBC News on Tuesday that Hamas had not received any proposal from the mediators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a briefing Tuesday, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel was still investigating the Rafah strike, including what caused the fire that he said \u201cresulted in this tragic loss of life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the IDF fired two 17 kilogram (37.5 pound) warheads targeting two senior Hamas militants, but he said somehow a fire was ignited, adding that the blaze was “unexpected and unintended.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He suggested the possibility that weapons stored in the area targeted might have ignited the fire, but said that was an “assumption” at this point. An Israeli official and U.S. official separately told NBC News it was possible a fuel tank was struck, igniting the blaze.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The images from the strike have piled pressure on the U.S. to act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked during Tuesday\u2019s White House briefing how many \u201ccharred corpses\u201d Biden needed to see before changing policy, Kirby said he took \u201coffense\u201d to the question, saying: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to see a single more innocent life taken.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IDF has waged a monthslong ground offensive in Gaza during which more than 36,000 people have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel launched the offensive following Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7 <\/a>terror <\/a>attacks<\/a>, in which around 1,200 people were killed and some 250 others taken hostage, <\/strong>according to Israeli officials. Some 125 people are believed to remain held in Gaza, with at least around a third believed to be dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said on Israeli radio that “we still expect another seven months of fighting this year to deepen the achievement and accomplish what we define as the destruction of Hamas’s governmental and military capabilities, without setting a stopwatch for ourselves.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s warning over the U.S. \u201cred line\u201d is reminiscent of former President Barack Obama\u2019s own use of the phrase in August 2012<\/a>, when he issued a warning over the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics accused Obama of allowing that boundary to be crossed without action from the U.S., with political opponent John McCain saying the Obama administration\u2019s red line <\/a>appeared to be \u201cwritten in disappearing ink.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Israeli forces pushed deeper into Rafah just days after an airstrike sparked a major fire that killed dozens of Palestinians, the White House said that its ally had not crossed the Biden administration\u2019s \u201cred line.\u201d Israeli tanks were seen entering central Rafah for the first time Tuesday, as global condemnation mounted over the deaths in a crowded tent camp for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":27874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153],"tags":[28748,2800],"class_list":["post-27817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military","tag-israel-attacks-raffa","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27819,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27817\/revisions\/27819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}