In statement after statement, Biden and his top national security officials said the United States “would not support” a “major military operation” in Gaza’s southernmost city, especially one that was not preceded by a “credible … executable” plan to ensure the protection and humanitarian support for an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians who had taken refuge there to escape fighting farther north.
“What we have seen so far in terms of Israel’s military operations in that area has been more targeted and limited, has not involved major military operations into the heart of dense urban areas,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Wednesday.
There was “no mathematical formula” for assessing the scale of the IDF offensive, he said. “What we’re going to be looking at is whether there is a lot of death and destruction from this operation or if it is more precise and proportional.”
But humanitarian organizations on the ground say the administration is simply refusing to acknowledge what it doesn’t want to see.
As Israeli forces have entered Rafah from the east and moved steadily westward toward the center, the city “is now comprised of three entirely different worlds,” Suze van Meegan, head of operations in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a statement Thursday. “The east is an archetypal war zone, the middle is a ghost town, and the west is a congested mass of people living in deplorable conditions.”
“The ‘limited’ offensive does not change much in terms of the reality on the ground … there is panic and fear everywhere,” she said. Nearly 1 million people have fled Rafah in the last 10 days, either from zones Israel has ordered evacuated or in anticipation of what is coming, according to Israel’s own accounting.
Most have gone either to the nearby city of Khan Younis, reduced to rubble in a spring Israeli offensive and strewn with unexploded ordnance; to central or northern Gaza, where fierce fighting against Hamas continues; or to the barren beach at Al-Mawasi, according to the NRC and other humanitarian organizations.
Another aid official whose organization is operating inside Rafah, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid endangering his colleagues, said that contrary to the Israeli government’s depiction of its current limited activities in and around the southern city, Rafah was already being subjected to a significant military operation, with limited ability to assist civilians in need. “What’s happening in Rafah is the slow onset of an all-out operation — with civilians still being killed under the cover of precision strikes,” the person said.
In a Monday briefing to the U.N. Security Council, Edem Wosornu, director of OCHA, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the “humanitarian situation in Gaza … has only grown more urgent amid ongoing Israeli ground operations in and around Rafah since May 6. The humanitarian community, she said, “is running out of words to describe what is happening.”
Biden’s red line threat brought sharp criticism from U.S. lawmakers, primarily Republicans, who charge he is undermining Israel’s struggle against Hamas terrorists responsible for the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war. Inside Israel itself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and allies in his government have said that those who question Israel’s tactics want Hamas to win. If the United States and others don’t want to help, Netanyahu has said, Israel will go it alone.
But pressure on the administration has also come from the opposite direction, with demonstrations on campuses and in cities across the country, along with charges from Democratic members of Congress and from other countries that Biden is supporting genocide in a conflict that has left, according to local health authorities, more than 35,000 Gazans dead.
It was “unclear to the public” what the difference is between “what we’re seeing now” in Rafah and what would cross Biden’s red line, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said to Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a Wednesday hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Could you explain the difference to us, please?”
As it tries to juggle conflicting imperatives, the administration often appears to be taking both sides and satisfying neither.
After pausing one shipment this month of heavy bombs it said should not be used for offensives in urban areas, Biden quickly approved a $1 billion worth of new weaponry for Israel, most of it composed of tank ammunition and mortar rounds of the type that is being expended in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza. Airstrikes have continued throughout the enclave.
U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, say that they accept that there will be civilian deaths during Israel’s operations in Rafah. But they insist that they still oppose any action that could lead to a large-scale death toll similar to Israel’s earlier operations in Khan Younis and Gaza City.
Sullivan said that the IDF had made “refinements” to its military operations, coinciding with talks he had over the weekend during a visit with Netanyahu and top national security officials.
“We had detailed discussions on Rafah,” he said. “These have built on weeks now … of discussions … about how Israel can achieve the defeat of Hamas everywhere in Gaza, while minimizing civilian harm.” He confirmed that the United States was providing “an intense range of assets and capabilities and expertise” to Israel to “hunt down” Hamas leaders.
“We are not holding anything back,” he said, in respect to a question about intelligence information. “We are providing every asset, every tool, every capability.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon this week, sounded less confident about where Israel’s Rafah operation was headed. He declined to say whether he expected it to expand, but said that there had been “far too many” civilian deaths in Gaza.
“We need to see something done a lot differently,” Austin said. “And even if there is kinetic activity, if there is an operation that is conducted that’s larger, we certainly would like to see things done differently, more precise and less destruction of the civilian structures and more protection of the civilian population.”
In a statement Thursday, IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that “the IDF is committed to operating in accordance with international law” and was implementing “lessons learned” since the war began “and refining our operations so that there is minimal harm to the Gazan civilians Hamas is hiding behind.”
Israel has successfully encouraged “around 1 million civilians” to “temporarily evacuate” Rafah to “humanitarian areas … out of harm’s way,” Hagari said. “We’re not smashing into Rafah. We’re operating carefully and precisely. So far we have eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists, exposed dozens of terror tunnels and destroyed vast amounts of infrastructure.”
But despite the divergent views of whether Israel’s move into Rafah constitutes a “major military operation,” there is little difference of opinion that Israel has not provided a “credible … executable” plan to provide for civilians.
Ciarán Donnelly, a senior official at the International Rescue Committee, said that the Israeli government has made no provision for the hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee Rafah. The coastal Mawasi area, where many civilians have been establishing makeshift shelters, is unsafe and lacks essential services, he said.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller acknowledged the scale of the problem. “We have great concerns about the ability to get them food, water, medicine, humanitarian assistance, shelter, sanitation,” Miller told reporters. “We are working with … our international partners on that question, but we are also engaged in conversations with the government of Israel about this.”
Aid entering Gaza has dropped precipitously from levels at the beginning of the month, which administration officials acknowledged at the time was still insufficient. The biggest impediment has been Israel’s closure of the main crossing from Egypt into Rafah, which has stopped virtually all humanitarian assistance to southern Gaza.
Blinken, at Wednesday’s hearing, told lawmakers that the Israeli operation was principally designed to take control of the border area to crack down on Hamas smuggling. He said he understood that objective, but noted that it has had a negative impact on the flow of aid.
Egypt strongly protested Israel’s closing of the crossing and in response stopped all aid trucks transiting from Egypt to Kerem Shalom, a nearby crossing from Israel or other entry points. U.S. and Israeli officials have said that other assistance is now flowing again through Kerem Shalom, but the United Nations and other aid organizations have said that their contents are not progressing much beyond the crossing due to lack of both fuel and security while the Israeli operation continues.
From several hundred a day, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza from all land crossings has dropped to low double digits, according to OCHA. Israeli operations in and around Rafah, the United Nations has said, has rendered inaccessible existing stocks in U.N. supply warehouses.
One alternative is the U.S. maritime aid operation that began operations last Friday via a temporary pier attached to the central Gaza coast, although U.S. officials have emphasized that the nascent flow is not intended to replace land operations. U.S. officials said Thursday that a total of 820 metric tons had been transferred from the pier to a marshaling area on the coast and that, as of Wednesday night, more than 500 metric tons were in the process of being distributed by the United Nations.
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, said in a Thursday briefing that officials were continuing to work through challenges in the shipping, offloading and distribution system, including the looting by desperate Palestinians of many of the initial trucks that entered via the pier over the weekend.
Michael Birnbaum in Kyiv and Shane Harris in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Edem Wosornu, director of OCHA, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as a he. The article has been corrected.
