Israel snubs US, says its military firm on ground invasion of Gaza’s Rafah
- Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said the military campaign will go ahead ‘even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States’
- Washington has told its ally that a major ground operation in Rafah ‘would be a mistake’ as it pushes for a six-week ceasefire
A top Israeli official said his country’s military is ultimately going to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah and defeat Hamas “even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States.”
“We are going to go in and finish this job, and anybody who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand that the existential nerve of the Jews was touched” by the October 7 attack when Hamas operatives killed 1,200 and abducted 250, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said on a US podcast posted online on Thursday.
A close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Dermer is headed to Washington early next week to listen to concerns from the Biden administration that such an invasion would cause many more civilian casualties at a time when famine and disease are spreading in Gaza.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the region pushing for a deal between Israel and Hamas that would lead to a six-week ceasefire and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners along with a big increase in humanitarian aid to the more than 2 million Palestinians in the coastal strip.
“We’ve been very clear – President Biden’s been very clear – that a major ground operation in Rafah would be a mistake, something we can’t support,” Blinken told reporters in Cairo on Thursday evening after meeting with Arab foreign ministers.
“There is no place for the many civilians who are massed in Rafah to go to get out of harm’s way, and for those that inevitably remain, it would be a humanitarian disaster.”