Biden Says He Won’t Supply Weapons to Israel if Rafah Assault Proceeds

Last updated on August 7th, 2024 at 04:29 pm

President Joe Biden has announced he won’t send certain weapons shipments to Israel if Israeli forces expand their military operations in the southern Gazan city of Rafah.

Sitting for an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Biden reiterated his monthslong opposition to an Israeli assault in Rafah and threatened to hold up weapons shipments if such an operation were to proceed.

Biden said he’s “made it clear” he’ll cut off some of the weapons the U.S. has supplied to Israeli forces thus far in their war in Gaza.

“I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically, to deal with Rafa, to deal with the city, to deal with that problem,” Biden said.

Biden said he’ll still fund Israel’s defensive systems like the Iron Dome air defense network, and enable “their ability to respond to attacks.”

The president’s comments came hours after U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin acknowledged the administration paused the delivery of “one shipment of high-payload munitions.” The weapons shipment Austin referenced may have included 2,000-pound bombs, according to NBC News.

Biden told CNN that civilians “have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of” Israel’s use of 2,000-pound bombs. The president said he could stop deliveries of other types of weapons, such as artillery shells.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set a wartime goal of eradicating Hamas, and has described Rafah as one of their last major strongholds, but the Biden administration and other international observers have noted the city has also been a gathering point for about a million civilians displaced in the last seven months of fighting.

Earlier on in the war, the Israeli military had routinely told civilians in the Gaza Strip to evacuate south, as they focused their attacks on the northern end of the strip. Israeli forces have since swept south, leaving a shrinking sliver of relative safety.

Even as Israeli ground operations focused on areas further north, Israeli air strikes have hit Rafah and other southern Gazan communities for months. Now, with much of Gaza’s civilian population pressed up against the Egyptian border, Israeli forces are telling civilians to once again relocate or risk their lives as they press the attack on this southernmost Gazan city.

On Monday, the Israeli military began advising civilians in certain parts of Rafah and the surrounding areas to relocate to Al-Mawasi, saying they have expanded a tent encampment and increased food and water deliveries to accommodate the evacuees. Hours after issuing these initial evacuation orders, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles rolled across the Rafah Crossing on the southeast outskirts of the city.

Biden told CNN this initial Israeli move to seize the Rafah Crossing hasn’t yet overstepped his concerns as “they haven’t gone into the population centers” yet. Still, he said the move is “causing problems” in regional diplomatic relationships.