Deadly Rafah strike doesn’t cross Biden’s ‘red line’
The U.S. may not be happy with the civilian deaths Rafah, but Israel’s military operation is within the boundaries of what it’ll accept.”
The Biden administration has decided Israel’s weekend strike in Rafah that reportedly killed nearly 50 displaced Palestinians did not cross the “red line” President Joe Biden set two months ago, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The administration made clear in public and in private on Tuesday that the incident, while devastating, would not trigger any serious reprimand from Washington. It’s the strongest indicator yet that Israel is conducting a military operation that the administration can accept, even if U.S. officials don’t like every aspect of it.
A senior administration official, granted anonymity to detail sensitive internal thinking, said the attack that successfully took out two Hamas operatives while killing 45 civilians and injuring dozens more did not cross Biden’s “red line” described first on March 9.
The operation as a whole shows Israel has heeded U.S. warnings to go into Rafah with a more targeted, precise operation, the senior official and two spokespeople said.
That assessment matches what senior administration officials have said for months. Despite multiple high-profile incidents that killed Western aid workers and Palestinian civilians, the U.S. has backed Israel’s stated goal of defeating Hamas throughout Gaza, including sending troops into the southern city of Rafah to attack remaining fighters. Israel’s decision to conduct targeted operations rather than a large-scale invasion involving thousands of troops has been enough for the administration to say that steps are being taken to protect civilians.
In briefings with reporters Tuesday, U.S. government spokespeople broadly confirmed the senior official’s assessment, though they refrained from directly addressing red lines.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the U.S. expects Israel to conduct a “full, transparent investigation” that holds those at fault to account, if necessary. But he also stressed that the Rafah operation so far was not “on the scale of” operations in Gaza City and Khan Younis, where Israel sent large numbers of forces and dropped many bombs. “This so far is a different type of military operation.”
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters later: “I have no policy changes to speak to” following the Rafah strike. He added that the administration’s view of a major ground operation features “thousands and thousands” of troops moving in organized columns against central, populated targets.
Asked about what number of civilian casualties the administration would find unacceptable, Kirby said “there’s not, like, a measuring stick here or a quota. As we’ve said many times, the right number of civilian casualties is zero.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the strike as a “tragic accident.” Vice President Kamala Harris, responding to that remark Tuesday, said “the word ‘tragic’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
The attack has led to ferocious criticism of the administration, with Democrats and human rights advocates calling for Biden to halt arms sales to the ally.
“The Biden administration continues to have a very high tolerance for Israel killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza — including with U.S. weapons,” said Brian Finucane, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group.
The administration has spent the last week praising the way Israel has conducted its Rafah operation as 1 million Palestinians fled the city.
A senior administration official told reporters on May 21 that Israel had updated its Rafah plans and “incorporated many of the concerns we have expressed” about civilian safety, even though Israel has presented no such credible plan publicly. Asked about that remark the next day, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who had just returned from a trip to Israel, said his counterparts briefed him on “refinements” to their Rafah plans.
“What we have seen so far in terms of Israel’s military operations in that area has been more targeted and limited, has not involved major military operations into the heart of dense urban areas,” he said, adding the administration would continue to watch what unfolds. “What we’re going to be looking at is whether there is a lot of death and destruction from this operation or if it is more precise and proportional.”
On Tuesday, Israeli tanks pushed into central Rafah, reaching the strategic zone three weeks after the invasion of the city began. Gazan health authorities later said Israeli tanks shelled a tent camp in a western Rafah evacuation zone, killing at least 21 people. Those moves came just four days after a United Nations court ordered Israel to halt its military operation there.
Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said he had seen reports of the Israeli tank movements but couldn’t confirm them.
Miller also confirmed, as other U.S. officials have, that Israel did not present the U.S. with a credible plan to protect civilians ahead of the Rafah invasion. Aid workers say a lack of those measures keeps Palestinians near fighting zones without safe access to food, water and sanitary facilities.
Israel’s Rafah operation made that even harder by forcing the closure of the city’s crossing with Egypt for weeks, leaving trucks carrying assistance to languish on the other side of the border.