The current position of the Biden administration seems to be: The U.S. fully supports Israel’s mission to defeat Hamas, in theory—as long as the IDF doesn’t attempt to complete its mission in actuality.
It makes sense as long as you don’t think about it.
The point of the Gaza ground offensive is to clear Hamas out of Gaza. There are four Hamas battalions in Rafah, a city in Gaza. So the IDF is going to remedy that. This is neither complicated nor unreasonable.
But Rafah is the site of the only Gaza border crossing into Egypt, and Egypt doesn’t really want the IDF poking around in there. The Biden administration sides with Cairo, saying an operation in Rafah is “not something that we would support.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response amounts to: I’m sorry you feel that way.
What explains all three positions? This post, by former IDF spokesman and current FDD fellow Jonathan Conricus sums it up pretty well: “As both Egypt and the US are ratcheting up pressure on Israel not to take Rafah, it makes you wonder what embarrassing evidence Israeli combat engineers may find in the tunnels from Egypt to Gaza. Only one way to find out, and my guess is that soon we will.”
In fairness to the Biden administration, there are over a million Gazans in Rafah because of the multiple evacuations…
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