The White House said Tuesday that Israel has not violated President Biden’s warnings on the conduct of its military campaign in Rafah, as scenes of charred bodies and accounts of people burning alive prompted global condemnation of the Israeli strike on Sunday.
Biden officials lamented the loss of life but said the attack did not cross the line Biden announced when he said the United States would suspend delivery of offensive weapons to Israel if it went into “population centers” in Rafah.
Responding to questions on whether Israeli tanks have pushed closer to central Rafah, the Israeli military said Wednesday that it “does not share the location of its forces.”
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Israel has expanded its offensive in Rafah in recent weeks, even though U.S. officials said they had been assured that operations in the city in southern Gaza would remain “limited.” On Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Israel has not launched a “major ground operation” in the city.
Eyewitnesses contacted by The Washington Post on Wednesday said Israeli tanks have pushed closer into central Rafah, accompanying an intense air operation that has led to what they described as a near-constant thud of airstrikes or other explosions.
Tanks moved into central Rafah near the city’s Awda roundabout and took up positions in western parts of the city including the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, the site of Sunday’s strikes.
Residents said Rafah’s eastern neighborhoods continued to see the fiercest clashes Wednesday and the highest number of airstrikes. The military wing of Hamas announced it carried out attacks on an Israeli tank unit in the Salam neighborhood.
Israeli forces expanded a cordon around Rafah on Wednesday, according to Mohammad al-Mughair of the civil defense forces in Gaza. “We expect that the Tal al-Sultan camp will be stormed,” Mughair said. Residents in that western neighborhood said Israeli forces were increasing surveillance of the area using unmanned vehicles.
Overnight Tuesday, many of the families sheltering in neighborhoods along Rafah’s western border with Egypt fled north after hearing the sounds of fighting move closer.
Nearly 1 million people have fled Rafah in the past three weeks, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that aids Palestinian refugees, even though there was “nowhere safe to go.”
Saudi Arabia condemned strikes on Rafah in a statement Wednesday that marked an escalation in its discourse on the war. The Saudi Foreign Ministry said the kingdom denounces “in the strongest terms the continuous genocidal massacres committed by the Israeli occupation forces,” and it accused Israel of “continuing to target the tents of defenseless Palestinian refugees in Rafah.”
U.S. officials have envisioned day-after plans for Gaza that would involve Arab neighbors and a deal that would include normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia says any agreement must include a viable path to Palestinian statehood, Israel has become more isolated over its Rafah assault, and diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have faltered.
Aid agencies said the Israeli offensive upended efforts to deliver basic supplies to starving Palestinians and forced the displaced to flee again. The groups have called on the U.N. Security Council to enforce an order from the International Court of Justice for Israel to halt military operations in Rafah.
At least 21 people were killed in a tent encampment near Rafah’s coast on Tuesday by what a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense said was Israeli artillery fire. The Israeli military said in a statement Tuesday that it “did not strike in the humanitarian area in al-Mawasi,” referring to a zone along Gaza’s coast. Witnesses said the strikes occurred just south of the humanitarian zone.
The Pentagon announced it has suspended aid delivery to Gaza via a U.S.-built floating pier, after mishaps occurred involving beached U.S. military vessels and sections of the structure ripped free in bad weather. The damage will require the U.S. military to disassemble parts of the pier, rebuild them at the nearby Ashdod port, then transport them back to the Gaza shore and reconnect them. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said Tuesday that “upon completion of the pier repair and reassembly, the intention is to re-anchor the temporary pier to the coast of Gaza” and resume aid deliveries.
The Israeli military on Tuesday announced preliminary results of an investigation into Sunday’s deadly strike in Rafah, which it said targeted two senior Hamas militants and used “the smallest munition that our jets can use,” described as 37 pounds in weight. It said the ongoing probe was looking into whether “secondary explosions” linked to “weapons stored in a compound next to our target” ignited a deadly blaze.
A career State Department official involved in the Biden administration’s debates over Israel’s conduct in Gaza resigned this week, citing disagreements with a recently published U.S. government report that claimed Israel was not impeding humanitarian assistance to Gaza, two officials told The Washington Post. The outgoing official, Stacy Gilbert, served in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Gilbert sent an email to staff explaining her view that the State Department was wrong to conclude Israel has not obstructed the assistance to Gaza, officials who read the letter said.
At least 36,171 people have been killed and 81,420 injured in Gaza since the war started, said the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 290 soldiers have been killed since the launch of its military operations in Gaza.
Lior Soroka, Kareem Fahim and Hajar Harb contributed to this report.
