Israel shells Rafah as Biden vows arms suspension

On Thursday, Israel shelled Rafah while US President Joe Biden delivered the strongest warning yet over Israel’s battle against Hamas, threatening to stop arms deliveries in the event that an offensive into the southern Gaza city is carried out.

In the border city, which it claims is home to Hamas’s last battalions, Israel has already disregarded UN objections by bringing in tanks and carrying out “targeted raids”—despite the fact that the area is also teeming with displaced Palestinian people.

Early on Thursday, AFP reporters observed intense shelling in Rafah. Later, the Israeli military announced that it was also hitting “Hamas positions” in the center of the Gaza Strip, farther north.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop US weapons supplies to Israel if it pushed ahead with its long-threatened Rafah ground offensive.

Israel on Thursday called the threat “very disappointing.”

Biden told CNN that, “If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used… to deal with the cities.” He added: “We’re not gonna supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used.”

Rafah’s border gate into Egypt, which has been the primary point of entry for supplies into the besieged Gaza, was taken over by Israel early on Tuesday.

At the time, the White House denounced the suspension of humanitarian aid, and the secretary of defense subsequently verified that Washington had stopped sending heavy bombs to Israel after the latter ignored concerns on its ground advance into Rafah.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” Biden said in his interview. “It’s just wrong.”

He insisted, however, that the United States, Israel’s staunchest ally, was “not walking away from Israel’s security”.

Biden’s threat was initially met with criticism from Israel’s UN envoy, Gilad Erdan, who described it as “a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war.”

The United States, Cairo, and Egypt have all played a significant role in the ongoing negotiations in Cairo to mediate a ceasefire in the seven-month conflict.