National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House on Monday that President Joe Biden had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to oppose Israeli plans to attack Hamas in the city of Rafah.
Sullivan added that the president had asked Netanyahu an “interagency” team of military, defense, and humanitarian officials by “the beginning of next week” to meet with U.S. officials in Washington and negotiate over a Rafah operation.
He said that the Biden Administration might approve limited, targeted strikes in Rafah, but would refuse a broader Israeli invasion of the town, saying that such an invasion would put civilians and humanitarian aid corridors at risk.
Rafah is the last stronghold of Hamas, on the Egyptian border in Gaza. It is home to the last four battalions of Hamas, and is thought to be where Hamas leaders are hiding and keeping Israeli hostages. It is also a key smuggling route.
Biden has publicly opposed any Israeli operation in Rafah since February, at least until there is a plan to evacuate the one million Palestinian civilians who have fled there. Netanyahu has said that not to invade Rafah is to lose the war.
Netanyahu and Biden spoke, just days after Biden endorsed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) demand that Israel hold new elections to replace Netanyahu, calling him an “obstacle to peace.” (Netanyahu called his remarks “inappropriate.”
Netanyahu’s version of the call was terse. “We discussed the latest developments in the war, including Israel’s commitment to achieving all of the war’s goals: Eliminating Hamas, freeing all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never gain constitutes a threat to Israel – while providing the necessary humanitarian aid that will assist in achieving these goals,” he said, in a statement released Monday by the Government Press Office.
Sullivan said that Biden had specifically criticized Netanyahu’s plans to attack Hamas in Rafah. Sullivan said that Biden had addressed what he called a “straw man,” the “nonsense” argument that to refrain from attacking Hamas in Rafah means giving up on defeating Hamas.
Instead, Sullivan said, Biden stressed that Hamas could be defeated without an invasion of Rafah. Sullivan did not elaborate as to how Biden proposed to convince Hamas to surrender without a fight.
Sullivan quoted Biden as saying that Israel needed to adopt a long-term “strategy” that included a Palestinian state. (Presumably, Hamas would be coaxed out of its tunnels, and away from its weapons, by the prospect of such a state.)
Sullivan said that the fact that Hamas terrorists had returned to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City — he emphasized, for whatever reason, that Hamas terrorists had fired “back” at Israeli soldiers” — was not proof that Hamas needed to be defeated militarily, but rather that Israel had failed to maintain control of areas it had already cleared out in Gaza.
Sullivan also claimed, bizarrely, that Israel interferes in American politics — a claim for which he gave no evidence.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, suggestions that Israel or Jews control American politics are antisemitic, and are common in anti-Israel propaganda throughout the Arab and Muslim world, fanning the flames of hatred and war.
The National Security Advisor also said that Israel had not presented a plan for evacuating civilians from Rafah. (In fact, as Breitbart News reported last week, Israel revealed a plan to evacuate Palestinians from Rafah to nearby areas.)
Sullivan suggested that Netanyahu had agreed to send a delegation to meet with Biden Administration officials, though his view on Rafah was different from the president’s. Essentially, the Biden Administration’s position is that Israel must negotiate for the right to defend itself, and to defeat the terrorists that launched the war on October 7. Left unsaid: Israel is still dependent on U.S. ammunition, and waiting for the Democrat-run Senate to pass emergency military aid.
Sullivan helped spread the “Russian collusion” hoax in 2016 and thereafter, misleading the media about Alfa Bank and misleading Congress about the role played by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, whose job he holds.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.