Netanyahu defies Biden’s threat and Israel continues Rafah offensive

Israeli forces bombed areas of Rafah on Thursday, Palestinian residents said, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected US President Joe Biden’s threat to cut off arms supplies to Israel if it attacks the southern Gaza city, writes Reuters, taken by News .ro.

An Israeli official said Thursday night that the latest round of indirect negotiations in Cairo to stop hostilities has ended and Israel will continue with its operation in Rafah and other areas of the Gaza Strip as planned.

Israel has conveyed to mediators its reservations about a Hamas proposal for a deal to release the hostages, the official said.

“If we have to, we will fight with our nails,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “But we have a lot more than our fingernails,” he added.

In Gaza, the Palestinian military groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters fired anti-tank rockets and mortars at Israeli tanks massed on the city’s eastern outskirts.

Residents and medics in Rafah, the largest urban area in Gaza not yet overrun by Israeli ground troops, said an Israeli attack near a mosque killed at least three people and wounded others in the eastern neighborhood of Brazil.

Video footage shows the minaret in ruins and two bodies wrapped in blankets.

An Israeli airstrike on two houses in the Sabra neighborhood of Rafah killed at least 12 people, including women and children.

Among the dead is a commander of the militant Al-Mujahedeen Brigades and his family, as well as the family of another leader of the group and doctors, their relatives say.

Israel says Hamas militants are hiding in Rafah, where the population has swelled as hundreds of thousands of Gazans seek refuge from shelling that has reduced most of the coastal enclave to rubble.

In the United States, the White House reiterated its hope that Israel would not launch a full-scale operation in Rafah, saying it did not believe it would advance Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas.

“Hitting Rafah, in (President Biden’s) view, will not advance that goal,” spokesman John Kirby said.

Kirby said Hamas has come under significant pressure from Israel and that there are better options to hunt down those who remain in the group’s leadership than an operation with a significant risk to civilians.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 80,000, mostly civilians, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said.

It launched the offensive in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas militants in Israel on October 7, in which they killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped 252. About 128 hostages are still in Gaza and 36 have been declared dead, according to the latest Israeli data.

Publisher: AC

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