Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back at the Biden administration’s red lines against a major Rafah military operation, insisting that Israel had no choice if it wanted to defeat Hamas.
“I emphasized to the president in our conversation, in the clearest way, that we are determined to complete the destruction of these [Hamas] battalions in Rafah.
“There is no way to do it other than through a ground operation,” Netanyahu told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
He spoke the day after his phone conversation with Biden, the first between the two leaders in over a month. It came amid a sharp debate between them over IDF plans for a major operation Rafah, where over 1.3 million Gaza Palestinians are located. Many of them fled to the southern part of the enclave to escape bombing in the north.
Israeli experts will head to Washington
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that during their talk, Netanyahu agreed to send a team of military and intelligence experts to Washington so the US could show them an alternative military plan for Rafah.
Netanyahu said he had agreed to this step out of respect for Biden, even though he understood they were wrong.
In Washington on Monday, Sullivan said it was Netanyahu who had erred by insisting that those who are asking Israel not to underrate a major military operation were asking it to lose the war.
Sullivan underscored in his comments to the press that the US agreed with Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas but thought it needed a different strategy.
“We have an argument with the Americans about the need to enter Rafah. Not about the need to eliminate Hamas,” Netanyahu said.
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