US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that Israel had not informed US President Joe Biden’s administration when it planned to invade the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he had set a date for the start of the ground operation, saying “no power in the world” would stop him from invading.
Blinken said the US “does not have a date for any Rafah operation”. Instead, he pointed to twice-delayed talks the US is seeking to hold with an Israeli delegation to present alternatives to a ground operation.
“What we have is an ongoing conversation with Israel about any Rafah operation. The president has been very clear about our concerns, our deep concerns, about Israel’s ability to take civilians out of harm’s way, to take care of them and have any a major military operation that does no real harm to civilians,” Blinken said at a press conference with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
He added that the US is committed to ensuring that Hamas cannot govern or dictate the future of Gaza.
“But how Israel conducts any further operations in Gaza is very important and as we said, we are talking to them about alternative, and in our opinion, effective ways of solving the problem,” he added.
Those talks are expected to take place next week after a meeting planned for this week was postponed. The talks were first abruptly canceled by Netanyahu at the end of March in retaliation for Washington’s decision not to veto the UN Security Council resolution on the ceasefire.
The reason for the latest delay is unclear, but it comes as Netanyahu faces mounting pressure from members of his cabinet to invade, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who threatened to topple the government on Monday.
Several countries, including the US, have called on Israel to abandon plans for a ground attack in Rafah. About 1.5 million internally displaced Palestinians sought refuge there in addition to the 200,000 who lived in the city before the war.
International negotiations to broker a ceasefire to stop the bloodshed in Gaza are still ongoing.
Cameron admitted that Washington and London were working on a “plan B” in case a truce was not reached.
“We need to think about what is Plan B, what humanitarian and other organizations can do to ensure that if there is a conflict in Rafah, people can achieve safety, they can get food, water, medicine,” Cameron said.
US President Joe Biden warned Israel after last week’s killing of seven international aid workers that future US support for Israel’s war depends on the implementation of major reforms in Tel Aviv and stressed during his telephone conversation with Netanyahu that “an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improved the humanitarian situation and protected innocent civilians” in Gaza, AA writes.
