Inside Biden’s decision to go public with his ultimatum to Israel over Rafah

Washington
CNN
 — 

President Joe Biden’s decision this week to make public his ultimatum that a major Israeli offensive in the city of Rafah would result in a shut-off of some US weapons did not come easily or lightly.

It came after multiple rounds of phone calls with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, starting in mid-February, urging him to reconsider his plans to invade the densely populated city in southern Gaza that has been a critical conduit for humanitarian aid.

Hours and hours of virtual and in-person meetings between Biden’s top national security lieutenants and their Israeli counterparts were intended to send the same message, according to officials: There are other ways to go after Hamas, Biden’s aides laid out, that stop short of invading a city where more than a million Palestinians have gone to seek safety, officials said.

At multiple levels, the president and his team warned Netanyahu that a major invasion of Rafah wouldn’t be aided by American weapons. It was a message the White House believed was well understood by the government in Israel, White House officials said Thursday.

Still, making those warnings public was a step Biden had long been wary of taking. Doing so would amount to a turning point, and the biggest break in US-Israel ties since the start of the war in Gaza following the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas. Even under pressure from progressives in his own party to take steps to limit humanitarian suffering in Gaza, Biden has been careful to avoid an open rift with Netanyahu.

Still, in Netanyahu’s war cabinet meetings, a decision to go into Rafah appeared imminent. The Israel Defense Forces have now established a presence in Rafah and along its border, choking off two aid entry points and warning of a larger offensive to come.

Ultimately, officials said, Biden came to believe his warnings were going unheeded and so he changed course.

Last week, Biden signed off on a pause of 3,500 bombs to Israel that administration officials feared would be dropped on Rafah. And on Wednesday, sitting at a community college in Wisconsin for an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Biden made explicit to the world what he said he’d already made obvious to Netanyahu in private.

“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden told Burnett.

The president’s aides said the message shouldn’t have been a surprise to their intended recipients in Israel.

“I can assure you the direct and forthright nature with which he expressed himself and his concerns in that interview with Erin Burnett is consistent with how he has expressed himself to Prime Minister Netanyahu and to Israeli officials,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday.

The Israeli government, Kirby said, “has understood … for some time now” the implications a major Rafah offensive would have on the future of American arms shipments.

Aware or not of the president’s views, Israeli officials reacted with shock to the public announcement. Netanyahu was defiant.

“If we need to stand alone, we will stand alone. I have said that, if necessary, we will fight with our fingernails,” he said Thursday. Israeli officials also sought to downplay the significance of Biden’s announcement. A spokesman for the IDF, Daniel Hagari, said Israel already has the weapons it needs for the missions it is planning.

In addition to 2,000-pound bombs, Biden told CNN that artillery could be held up in the event of a Rafah invasion. Despite being smaller in size than the bombs, the Biden administration views artillery as indiscriminate and imprecise weapons that can exact a dangerous toll in urban areas.

Israel has claimed its current campaign in Rafah is “limited,” a description US officials have echoed. But behind the scenes, doubts linger about Israel’s intentions, CNN has learned, with limited clarity provided to the US on how it…