Biden says conduct of Gaza war ‘over the top,’ Israel PM orders plan to evacuate Rafah

State, White House say Israeli assault on Rafah without planning for protecting population would be a ‘disaster,’ and the United States would not support it.

President Biden said Thursday he believes that Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza has been “over the top,” and suggested that he hoped a new deal being negotiated for the release of the remaining over 100 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for an pause in fighting could be extended into a longer term ceasefire that would see an end to intense combat operations.

“I'm of the view…that the conduct of the response in…the Gaza strip has been over the top,” Biden said in a brief press conference at the White House Thursday night, following the release of a special prosecutor’s report saying Biden should not face criminal charges for the retention of classified documents after he served as vice president, but that Biden had appeared to have a poor memory.

“I've been pushing really hard, really hard, on getting humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” Biden said. “There are a lot of innocent people who are starving…and it's got to stop.”

“I'm pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage/ceasefire,” he said. “I think if we could get that… initial delay [sustained pause], I think that we would be able to extend that, so that we can increase the prospect that this fighting in Gaza changes.”

‘Disaster’: US warns it opposes Israeli assault on Rafah without planning for protecting civilians

Biden’s increasing frankness about his desire for a reduction of Israeli military operations in Gaza or extended ceasefire comes as U.S. officials expressed growing and open alarm about the lack of Israeli planning to date for how to protect the over million Palestinian people sheltering in the southern Gaza city of Rafah as Israel says it wants to move its military operations there.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday ordered the Israeli military and security services to submit a plan on evacuating the population of Gaza ahead of Israeli military operations in the city on Gaza’s border with Egypt, that serves as the key transit point for humanitarian aid into the enclave and the evacuation of foreign nationals.

“It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office on Friday (Feb. 9) said.

“It is clear that intense operation in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat,” it continued. “Therefore, Prime Minister Netanyahu has ordered the IDF and the security establishment to submit to the Cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying these battalions.”

U.S. officials said they had yet to see any sign of such planning including on Secretary of State Blinken’s trip to the region this week, and pursuing the operation without it would be a disaster.

“On Rafah,….we have yet to see any evidence of serious planning for such an operation,” State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told journalists at the State Department briefing on Thursday. “To... conduct such an operation right now with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster.”

Rafah “is a key conduit for access of humanitarian aid,” Patel continued. “The Rafah border crossing is where foreign nationals, including American citizens…are able to safely depart.”

“We would not support the undertaking of something like this without serious and credible planning as it relates to the more than a million people who are sheltering there, as well as without considering the impacts on humanitarian assistance and the safe departure of foreign nationals as well,” Patel said.

The U.S. government currently assesses that the Israelis are still weeks away from being able to launch a major operation in Rafah.

“We’ve seen no plans that would convince us that they [the Israeli military] are about to or imminently going to conduct any kind of major operations in Rafah,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told journalists at the White House briefing on Thursday.

“I think you all know more than a million Palestinians are sheltering in and around Rafah,” Kirby said. “That’s where they were told to go….And the Israeli military has a special obligation as they conduct operations there or anywhere else to make sure that they’re facing in protecting for innocent civilian life, particularly…the civilians that were pushed into southern Gaza by operations further north.”

“Absent any full consideration of protecting civilians at that scale in Gaza, military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support,” Kirby said.

White House issues new National Security Memo to increase leverage on US military aid recipients to respect international law, facilitate humanitarian aid

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Democrat, Maryland) praised a new National Security Memorandum issued by the President on Thursday that requires for the first time that countries receiving U.S. military aid provide written assurances in advance of receiving it that they will comply with international humanitarian law, and facilitate and not impede efforts to provide U.S.-supported humanitarian assistance to populations in conflict zones.

“This national security memorandum will give the Biden administration much more leverage to ensure that every recipient of U.S. military assistance, including the Netanyahu government, has to make the commitment to use those weapons in compliance with international humanitarian law,” Van Hollen said in a press call Thursday night.

“They have to make the commitment to facilitate U.S.-supported efforts to provide the delivery of humanitarian assistance,” he continued. “And there are…enforcement measures…backed up by reporting requirements that will hold these countries accountable.”

The new Memorandum, NSM-20, is the result of extensive discussions between Van Hollen and the National Security Council and builds off a proposed amendment by Van Hollen and 18 other Senators to the national security supplemental currently being mulled by the Senate.

“I do believe that this will give the Biden administration much more leverage to…have the tools now to reduce the unacceptable, high, extreme levels of civilian casualties, and remove many of the roadblocks that are in the way of getting humanitarian assistance to two million Gazans who have nothing to do with Hamas,” Van Hollen said.

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