Netanyahu agrees to send officials to US to discuss prospective Rafah operation
18 March 2024, 20:24
The announcement came after US President Joe Biden and Mr Netanyahu spoke on Monday for the first time for a month.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington to discuss with Biden administration officials a prospective Rafah operation, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has said.
“We’ve arrived at a point where each side has been making clear to the other its perspective,” Mr Sullivan said.
Mr Sullivan said the talks will happen in the coming days and are expected to involve military, intelligence and humanitarian experts.
The White House has been skeptical of Netanyahu’s plan to carry out an operation in the southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, as Israel looks to eliminate Hamas following Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack.
The announcement came after US President Joe Biden and Mr Netanyahu spoke on Monday, their first interaction in more than a month as the divide has grown between allies over food crisis in Gaza and the conduct of war.
The call came after Republicans in Washington and Israeli officials were quick to express outrage after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sharply criticised Mr Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza and called for Israel to hold new elections.
They accused the Democratic leader of breaking the unwritten rule against interfering in a close ally’s electoral politics.
Mr Biden has not endorsed Mr Schumer’s call for election but said he thought he gave a “good speech” that reflected the concerns of many Americans.
The White House has been skeptical of Mr Netanyahu’s plan of carrying out an operation in the southern city of Rafah, to which more than a one million displaced Palestinians have fled, as Israel looks to eliminate Hamas following Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack.
Biden administration officials have warned that they would not support such an operation without the Israelis presenting a credible plan to ensure the safety of innocent Palestinian civilians.
Israel has yet to present such a plan, according to White House officials.
The Biden-Netanyahu call also comes amid more dire warnings about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
The report came from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a partnership of more than a dozen governments, UN aid and other agencies that determines the severity of food crises.
It warned that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza, where 70% of the remaining population is experiencing catastrophic hunger, and that a further escalation of the war could push around half of Gaza’s population to the brink of starvation.
Mr Netanyahu spoke out against the American criticism on Sunday, describing calls for a new election as “wholly inappropriate”.
Netanyahu told Fox News Channel that Israel never would have called for a new US election after the September 11 2001 attacks, and he denounced Mr Schumer’s comments as inappropriate.
“We’re not a banana republic,” he said. “The people of Israel will choose when they will have elections, and who they’ll elect, and it’s not something that will be foisted on us.”
