{"id":49856,"date":"2024-05-14T01:46:07","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T01:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/14\/white-house-says-israel-still-has-provided-no-plan-to-protect-rafah-civilians\/"},"modified":"2024-05-14T01:46:08","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T01:46:08","slug":"white-house-says-israel-still-has-provided-no-plan-to-protect-rafah-civilians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/14\/white-house-says-israel-still-has-provided-no-plan-to-protect-rafah-civilians\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Says Israel Still Has Provided No Plan to Protect Rafah Civilians"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/13\/multimedia\/13mideast-crisis-biden-white-house-briefing-jckv\/13mideast-crisis-biden-white-house-briefing-jckv-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"White House Says Israel Still Has Provided No Plan to Protect Rafah Civilians\" title=\"White House Says Israel Still Has Provided No Plan to Protect Rafah Civilians\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Biden\u2019s national security adviser said on Monday that while the United States was committed to Israel\u2019s defense, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government had still failed to provide the White House with a plan for moving nearly a million Gazans safely out of Rafah before any invasion of the city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a lengthy presentation to reporters, the adviser, Jake Sullivan, also said Israel had yet to \u201cconnect their military operations\u201d to a political plan for the future governance of the Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Sullivan, who has been at the center of the administration\u2019s response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel and its aftermath, described in detail the administration\u2019s objectives in intervening to achieve a cease-fire and a return of hostages, including Americans, still in the hands of Hamas. But beneath repeated expressions of support for Israel, he made clear Mr. Biden\u2019s frustration in dealings with Mr. Netanyahu, after a series of heated conversations between the two men.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Sullivan insisted that the only weapons Mr. Biden was withholding from the Israelis were 2,000-pound bombs, for fear that the U.S. munitions, which can level whole city blocks, would be employed by Israel in its effort to rout Hamas leaders from their tunnel network, deep under the city.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The United States, he noted, was still sending defensive weapons, and a range of offensive arms that did not run the risk of major civilian casualties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe still believe it would be a mistake to launch a major military operation into the heart of Rafah that would put huge numbers of civilians at risk without a clear strategic gain,\u201d Mr. Sullivan said. \u201cThe president was clear that he would not supply certain offensive weapons for such an operation, were it to occur.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But he insisted it \u201chas not yet occurred,\u201d despite heightened bombing around the city, and said the United States was \u201cstill working with Israel on a better way to ensure the defeat of Hamas everywhere in Gaza, including in Rafah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nonetheless, House Republicans are planning to push through a bill that would rebuke Mr. Biden for pausing the shipments of the 2,000 pound bombs. It would be a symbolic move \u2014 there is no way the bill would pass the Democratic-controlled Senate \u2014 but appeared to be part of an effort to turn the arms holdup into an election-year issue; many Democrats had been urging Mr. Biden to suspend or limit arms sales to Israel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The vote is designed to split Democrats on an issue that has been cleaving the party and serve as another way for Republicans to present themselves as the true friends of Israel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, called Mr. Biden\u2019s arms holdup a \u201cdisastrous policy decision\u201d that was also \u201cdeliberately hidden from Congress and the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As recently as eight days ago, the State Department was still arguing that the weapons holdup was a technical matter. But after word leaked out, Mr. Biden himself acknowledged, in an interview on CNN, that he had made the decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Mr. Sullivan said the United States was still working with Israel on a way to deal with terrorists in Rafah, he appeared to be referring to a series of tense interactions with the Israelis about alternatives to a full-scale invasion. Those largely center on targeted counterterrorism operations, similar to how Israel dealt with hunting down the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics terror attack in 1972.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Sullivan refused to discuss recent reports saying United States intelligence officials suspected that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas\u2019s most senior official in Gaza, was no longer in Rafah. But he acknowledged that if Mr. Sinwar had moved his base of operations elsewhere, the attack on the southern city made even less sense.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He was most blistering about Israel\u2019s inability, seven months after the initial terrorist attack, to develop a plan for how Gaza would be administered after the war was over, or how to link their military assaults on Gaza to political objectives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe\u2019re talking to Israel about how to connect their military operations to a clear strategic end game, about a holistic, integrated strategy to ensure the lasting defeat of Hamas and a better alternative future for Gaza and for the Palestinian people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The failure of Israel\u2019s current approach, he said, was made evident by the fact that areas in the North that were previously bombed have seen a return of Hamas, which ruled over Gaza, if often corruptly, for many years. He suggested the administration feared the same would happen in Rafah and elsewhere unless the military action was linked to a credible plan for Palestinian governance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Annie Karni<!-- --> contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/13\/world\/middleeast\/white-house-israel-rafah.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Biden\u2019s national security adviser said on Monday that while the United States was committed to Israel\u2019s defense, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government had still failed to provide the White House with a plan for moving nearly a million Gazans safely out of Rafah before any invasion of the city. In a lengthy presentation to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/13\/multimedia\/13mideast-crisis-biden-white-house-briefing-jckv\/13mideast-crisis-biden-white-house-briefing-jckv-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24120,79,38,736,713,4761,7797],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49858,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49856\/revisions\/49858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}