Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded Tuesday to the claim by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that it was a “straw man” and “nonsense” to believe invading Rafah is the only way to defeat Hamas.
For weeks, President Joe Biden has spoken out against a potential Israeli attack on Hamas in Rafah, a city in Gaza near the Egyptian border that is the terrorist organization’s last stronghold. Biden has said he is concerned about the welfare of roughly one million Palestinian civilians in the area, many of whom fled to Rafah from elsewhere in Gaza. He also apparently wants to pressure Israel to accept a Palestinian state as the outcome of the war Hamas started October 7.
As Breitbart News reported, Sullivan told reporters on Monday that Biden expressed his opposition to a Rafah invasion in a phone call with Netanyahu (days after Biden backed demands that Israel hold new elections to oust Netanyahu.)
Sullivan said it was a fallacy to believe that invading Rafah was necessary to defeat Hamas. He did not say how else Hamas was to be defeated, implying that a “two-state solution” might coax Hamas into dropping its war against Israel.
Biden also summoned Israeli officials to a meeting in Washington in the last week of March to discuss what Israel can and cannot do in Rafah, indicating that he might only approve of limited operations against specific Hamas targets.
The U.S. holds leverage against Israel because the latter depends heavily on arms and ammunition manufactured by American companies, and because the Democrat-run Senate has not yet approved billions of dollars in emergency aid.
In a statement Tuesday to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, published by the Government Press Office and translated from Hebrew, Netanyahu said he accepted Biden’s invitation but would insist on entering Rafah (emphasis added):
We are in a dual campaign – a military campaign and a diplomatic campaign. Of course, they are inter-connected, the diplomatic fight gives us the time and the resources to reach the full results of the war.
We have been fighting for over five months, this is a record in the history of Israel’s wars, except for the War of Independence. We are – of course – under growing international pressure, which we are rejecting in order to achieve the goals of the war. The goals of the war are, to be succinct: The destruction or elimination of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the release of all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel.
In order to do this, we need to complete the military elimination of Hamas. There is no alternative to this. We cannot go around it; neither can we say ‘We will destroy 80% of Hamas and leave 20%’, because from that 20%, they will reorganize and take over the Strip again and – of course – constitute a new threat to Israel. And of course, this will be a victory for the greater axis that threatens us – the Iranian axis.
Therefore, we are determined to complete the elimination of Hamas. This requires the elimination of the remaining battalions in Rafah and – of course – the 1.5 battalions in the camps in the center. We are determined to do this. We have a debate that I will put on the table, and we all know it. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also said this yesterday. We have a debate with the Americans over the need to enter Rafah, not over the need to eliminate Hamas, but the need to enter Rafah. We see no way to eliminate Hamas militarily without destroying these remaining battalions. We are determined to do this.
Out of respect for the President, we agreed on a way in which they can present us with their ideas, especially on the humanitarian side; of course, we fully share this desire to facilitate an orderly exit of the population and the providing of humanitarian aid to the civilian population. We have been doing this since the beginning of the war.
However, I made it as clear as possible to the President that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there is no way to do this without a ground incursion.
The delay in a final attack on Hamas has reportedly been exacerbated by a slowdown in U.S. arms deliveries to Israel, as well as by Biden’s opposition. That delay has, ironically, worsened the humanitarian crisis among Palestinians in Gaza.
Netanyahu has been saying since early February that it would only take “weeks” and not “months” to end the war — that is, presuming Israel were actually allowed to fight to victory. Six weeks later, the final assault on Rafah still awaits.
Former President Donald Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired on Sunday that he would urge Israel to “finish” Hamas and end the war quickly. He added that Hamas would never have attacked if he had been in office.
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.
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