9/5/2024–|Last updated: 5/9/202402:25 PM (Mecca time)
Israeli officials criticized US President Joe Biden’s threat to stop arming Israel if it invaded the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. In return, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called for reaching an exchange deal and stopping the war.
In a remarkable development, Biden warned Israel publicly for the first time yesterday, Wednesday, that Washington would stop supplying it with weapons if it invaded the city of Rafah. The US President acknowledged for the first time that the bombs his country supplied to Israel were used to kill Palestinian civilians.
In the first official Israeli reaction to Biden’s statements, Israeli Radio quoted the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, describing the American position as difficult, frustrating and disappointing.
Erdan added that the American position would prevent Israel from achieving its primary goal of the war, which is to overthrow the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and give Israel’s enemies hope of survival, as he put it.
In turn, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir responded to the US President’s statement on his account on the X platform that Hamas loves Biden.
Hamas ❤️Biden
— Facebook Twitter (@itamarbengvir) May 9, 2024
Israeli President Isaac Herzog commented on Ben Gvir’s tweet, saying that “irresponsible, insulting and baseless statements must be avoided.”
Meanwhile, Energy Minister Eli Cohen told the same newspaper, commenting on the American decision, that “independence in the production of weapons and ammunition is extremely important for Israel’s security.”
Cohen, who previously served as Secretary of State, added, “We do not need to wait until the end of the war. We must move immediately to establish production systems in existing companies, and create new defense companies to produce weapons and ammunition.”
For its part, the newspaper “Israel Today” quoted an official as saying that Rafah must be occupied in order to show the world that Israel is not an “American protectorate.”
Israeli frustration
Meanwhile, Axios quoted two informed sources as saying that senior Israeli officials warned their American counterparts that the decision to suspend arms shipments to Israel might undermine hostage negotiations. The website stated that Israeli officials informed the Biden administration that it needed to put pressure on Hamas, not on Israel.
The website also reported that Israeli officials expressed their frustration to American officials not only because of the suspension of the arms shipment, but also because the matter was leaked to the media.
Israeli Channel 12 quoted a senior Israeli official as saying that the Israeli army will enter Rafah in any case, and that Israel has sufficient means to do so without aid.
While the Israeli Broadcasting Authority announced that discussions between senior Israeli officials and the US government regarding a possible military operation in Rafah stopped 3 weeks ago, and no date has been set for further discussions.
The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, citing officials, added that it is impossible to start the military part of the operation inside Rafah, without discussions with the Americans.
This comes at a time when the Occupation Army Radio reported that Israel would not be able to ignore Biden’s threat to stop supplying it with ammunition if it began a large-scale operation in Rafah, stressing that the large-scale operation in Rafah has been stopped so far, considering that Biden harmed Israel’s position in the negotiations when he stripped it of the pressure factor. The great military she has.
Stop the war
On the other hand, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said that Israel needs a deal and the movement in Cairo must be exhausted to return the kidnapped people to the homeland, according to him. He believed that US President Joe Biden’s threat to prevent the supply of weapons to Israel is a result of the failed administration of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Lapid added that he offered Netanyahu what he called a “safety net,” pointing out that the Prime Minister did not make the deal because he is imprisoned by these lunatics, Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, as he described it.
He added that if the two ministers in the Israeli War Council, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, had not been in the government, Israel would have moved beyond the era of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich.
In a post on his account on the X platform, Lapid wrote that violence towards the families of the kidnapped is unforgivable, and the police must contain the families’ protests and pain. He added, “Instead of sending the police to beat the families of the kidnapped people, the government should do everything to return their children.”
Complex situation
For his part, the former head of Israeli defense production and procurement rejected the claim that Israel could deal with what he described as “threats” without American weapons, saying that Israel would be forced to obtain weapons from elsewhere.
Haaretz newspaper quoted Israeli officials as saying that Tel Aviv must listen to American warnings, otherwise it will find itself facing a complicated situation, as he put it. The newspaper reported, citing officials, that stopping US military aid to Tel Aviv would reflect negatively on it if a war broke out on other fronts.
Two days ago, an American official said that the United States last week suspended sending a shipment of bombs to Israel after it failed to address Washington’s “concerns” about the Israeli occupation army’s plans to invade Rafah.
The official said, “Last week, we suspended sending one shipment of weapons consisting of 1,800 bombs, each weighing 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms), and 1,700 bombs, each weighing 500 pounds (226 kilograms).”
Since last October 7, Israel has been waging a war on Gaza that has left more than 113,000 dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and about 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of children and the elderly.