Journalists, Aid Workers In Rafah Push Back On Biden’s Claim About Israeli Ground Invasion | EUROtoday

President Joe Biden stated on Wednesday that Israeli forces haven’t but launched an anticipated floor invasion on Rafah — a red-line transfer that he’d beforehand stated would halt the U.S. provide of weapons to Israel. But as of Thursday, media experiences and humanitarians recommend {that a} floor assault on Rafah had already begun.

In an interview with CNN that aired Wednesday evening, Biden publicly admitted for the primary time that Israel has used U.S. weapons to kill Palestinian civilians. The president additionally relayed a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: The U.S. will withhold shipments of offensive weapons to Israel if the army launches a full-scale floor invasion into Rafah that causes main civilian hurt.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons,” Biden informed CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“They haven’t gone into the population centers,” he added, of Israel’s actions.

But media experiences dispute the Biden administration’s characterization of Israeli actions in Rafah as restricted.

Amid the destruction brought on by Israel’s Gaza offensive, 1.4 million displaced Palestinians have crowded into Rafah. Earlier this week, Israel dropped flyers ordering greater than 100,000 Palestinians within the jap a part of town to evacuate and flee to Khan Younis or Al-Mawasi — cities that don’t have the infrastructure to help extra refugees.

Biden, who spoke to Netanyahu on Monday, stated that he “made it clear” to the prime minister and his cupboard that Israel won’t obtain “our support if in fact they go on these population centers.”

Satellite photographs that CNN obtained from Planet Labs present that Israel has expanded its assault on Rafah from airstrikes to a floor offensive as of this week. The photographs, spanning May 5 to May 7, recommend that a few of the infrastructure has already been bulldozed, and present what seem like areas for IDF automobiles to assemble.

Footage from Gaza freelance journalist Majdi Fathi posted on Instagram Wednesday present explosions in Rafah and males carrying severely injured kids. Hospital data as of Wednesday afternoon confirmed that greater than two dozen folks had been wounded after Israeli forces struck part of central Rafah, in response to Associated Press journalists on the bottom.

“What we have been experiencing is mass destruction, lethal force being used on the ground against not only the eastern areas but also … in the middle and western parts [of Rafah],” Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum stated. Azzoum stated the expanded assaults embrace on Al-Mawasi, the overcrowded metropolis that Israel informed refugees in Rafah to flee to.

According to the Planet Labs photographs, some IDF automobiles seem to have pushed greater than a mile into Gaza from the border crossing into Egypt, which had served as Gaza’s greatest help route till Israeli tanks seized it this week.

But “the truth is that the Israeli occupation forces have been operating in all of the city, while a ground invasion has started in the eastern side of it,” Motasem A Dalloul, a journalist with the pro-Palestine Middle East Monitor, posted on Xpreviously Twitter. “Israeli fighters and artillery have been pounding all parts of the city, including the city centre.”

Scott Anderson, the deputy director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Gaza, stated the company’s meals rations will run out on Friday, in response to Politico.

The preventing on the bottom in Rafah “was pretty active today,” Anderson informed the publication on Wednesday. “The other part of all this is, anywhere there’s a concentration of IDF — it becomes a target. So every crossing today was hit by something. There is a more robust IDF presence now. There’s two brigades, one’s a specialist in tunnels and the other one were the perpetrators of the [World Central Kitchen] incident. Those are the two brigades operating now and in south Rafah.”

“There are children and elderly that are so starved that they can barely walk,” Alexandra Saieh, head of humanitarian coverage from Save the Children, informed the publication Middle East Eye. “These people cannot just relocate to another area, to so-called ‘safe zones.’ It is not possible.”

The White House final week placed on maintain a cargo of bombs to Israel out of concern for an invasion into Rafah.

HuffPost has reached out to the White House for remark.

Biden’s resolution to attract a crimson line at a Rafah invasion, some seven months into the conflict, has drawn rebukes from each Republicans and progressives against Israel’s offensive. Critics on the correct have accused the president of abandoning the most important U.S. ally within the Middle East Critics on the left say the president’s assertion implies that Israel is permitted by the White House to proceed bombing Rafah and blocking life-saving help, so long as troopers don’t bodily step foot into town.

“Given rising domestic opposition to Biden’s Gaza policy, the U.S. wants a lower civilian casualty toll than Israel does,” Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East research at Georgetown University, informed Al Jazeera. “Objectively, what has transpired is a minor shift in U.S. support for Israeli policy in Gaza.”

“It has moved from 100% support to 99% support,” he continued. “Israel can still bomb Rafah with impunity. It can displace the 1.4 million people residing there. It just cannot do this with U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs that Israel has used in other parts of Gaza.”