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Last March, when the IDF was preparing an offensive against Hamas in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, Joe Biden was alarmed. He publicly told Prime Minister Netanyahu not to do it, saying that such a move would cross a “red line.” He threatened to withhold military aid to Israel. Kamala Harris also said that having “studied the maps,” she knew that such an operation could only end in disaster because of the one million civilians living in Rafah; she said there would be “consequences” if the IDF went ahead. More on how the Bidenites tried to stop the IDF from entering Rafah, and how Prime Minister Netanyahu went ahead anyway, can be found here: “After Sinwar killing, Netanyahu sees vindication in his Rafah approach,” by Lazar Berman, Times of Israel, October 18, 2024:
In mid-March, US officials told the Politico news site that US President Joe Biden would consider limiting future military aid to Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went ahead with an offensive against Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah.
Days before, Biden said in an interview that such an IDF move into the city would be a “red line,” while adding that he was “never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical.”
Vice President Kamala Harris famously said at the time that she had “studied the maps” and that a Rafah operation was not viable, while warning of potential consequences.
The US wasn’t the only country to use unusually harsh language in warning against the step. An Israeli offensive in Rafah “could only lead to an unprecedented humanitarian disaster and would be a turning point in this conflict,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. The UK, Jordan and Egypt also issued stark injunctions.
In fact, world leaders were projecting outright panic over the planned campaign, which Israel insisted was necessary in order to complete the dismantlement of Hamas. They warned of catastrophic consequences for the civilian population in the city, which had become a refuge for much of the Strip’s population amid the war; they said a proper evacuation of the city would require months and was unfeasible; they predicted a cataclysmic death toll that would dwarf all that had come before.
The intense global pressure led to months of delay, but the Rafah offensive eventually went ahead in May regardless, with Israel successfully evacuating the civilian population ahead of its push into the city — in a matter of days — and none of the predictions of disaster coming to pass. Over the course of four months, the military systematically dismantled Hamas’s Rafah Brigade, with civilian deaths actually far lower than during the opening campaigns of the war in Gaza’s north….
That evacuation of the city’s civilian population that everyone outside Israel said couldn’t possibly be accomplished successfully, in fact was accomplished within three weeks. One million people left Rafah, between May 6 and May 26, both for Al-Mawasi, an area that the IDF had declared to be a “humanitarian zone,” and for parts of Khan Yunis.
Will any intrepid reporter ask Kamala Harris if she now thinks, with the killing of Yahya Sinwar in Rafah, that her attempt last March to prevent the IDF from moving into the city by threatening that there would be “consequences,” was ill-advised? Will anyone ask Joe Biden if he now admits he was wrong to describe an IDF move into Rafah as “crossing a red line” and to threaten to cut military aid if the IDF went ahead? Had the IDF stayed out of Rafah, four Hamas battalions in the city would still be intact, and Yahya Sinwar would still be alive. Biden and Harris were clearly wrong before in threatening Israel over a looming operation in Rafah. Now that they have issued a new threat to withhold military aid unless 350 trucks with humanitarian aid enter Gaza every day, is it just possible that they are wrong this time, too?
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