WASHINGTON: The United States issued Friday a stunning criticism of Israel’s use of American weapons in the Gaza war, after Israeli forces intensified operations around the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced people are sheltering.
Israel’s main international ally said it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel has used weapons in ways inconsistent with international humanitarian law during the seven-month war, but said it could not reach “conclusive findings” and stopped short of blocking shipments.
Relations between the two allies sunk earlier in the week after US President Joe Biden threatened to halt some arms deliveries if Israel went ahead with a full-scale assault on Rafah threatened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The US has warned that the reputational damage Israel will suffer if it storms a city where an estimated 1.4 million civilians are sheltering will far outweigh any possible military gain.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said Friday that Gaza risked an “epic humanitarian disaster” if Israel launched a full-scale ground operation in Rafah, while France urged Israel to cease its operations in Rafah “without delay”.
The Israeli premier has said repeatedly that Israel cannot defeat Hamas and eliminate any possibility of the militant group repeating its bloody October 7 attack without sending ground troops into Rafah in search of remaining Hamas fighters.
Netanyahu struck a defiant tone on Thursday, vowing: “If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone.”
The White House renewed its opposition Friday but said it saw no major operation yet against the city.
“We’re obviously watching it with concern, of course, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say what we’ve seen here in the last 24 hours connotes or indicates a broad, large (or) major ground operation,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Earlier this week, Israeli ground troops seized eastern areas of the city, including the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, but they have yet to enter its main built-up area.
The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,943 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
– Displaced again –
Israel’s military operations around Rafah have already had a severe impact on Gaza civilians, UN agencies said.
More than 100,000 people, many of them already displaced from other areas of Gaza, have fled Rafah this week, the United Nations said.
Many have returned to the city of Khan Yunis, where intense fighting raged earlier this year, or are crowded into shelters along the coast in the central town of Deir al-Balah.
Displaced civilian Malek al-Zaza said he had found “no food” and “no water” in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
“No one is asking about us, no one is looking for us… We only have God looking out for us,” he said.
The Rafah crossing, which Israeli troops closed on Tuesday, is the only one normally used for deliveries of fuel, and the United Nations said the resulting exhaustion of stocks inside Gaza had effectively halted aid agency operations.
COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civil affairs, said it had delivered 200,000 litres of fuel to Gaza on Friday using a different crossing.
That is the quantity the United Nations says is needed every day to keep aid trucks moving and hospital generators working.
The Israeli army said four soldiers were killed on Friday when an “explosive device” went off near a school in Gaza City. The deaths took to 271 the Israeli military’s losses in the Gaza campaign since the start of its ground offensive on October 27.
The army said rocket fire from Gaza had wounded an Israeli civilian in the southern city of Beersheba. It was the first time since December that the city had come under Palestinian rocket attack.
Israel orders people in more areas of Gaza’s Rafah to evacuate
Israel called on Saturday for Palestinians in more areas of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah to evacuate and head to what it calls an expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, in a further indication that the military is pressing ahead with its plans for a ground attack on Rafah.
In a post on social media site X, a military spokesperson also called on residents and displaced people in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, and 11 other neighbourhoods in the enclave to leave immediately to the west of Gaza City.
According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, 24 Palestinians were killed overnight after Israeli jets targeted several areas in central Gaza.
Despite heavy US pressure and alarm expressed by residents and humanitarian groups, Israel has said it will proceed with an incursion into Rafah, where more than one million displaced people have sought refuge during the seven-month-old war.
Israel’s military said that so far, about 300,000 Gazans have been forced to move towards Al-Mawasi.
Israel says it cannot win the war without rooting out members of Hamas which it alleges are deployed in Rafah.
Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing Rafah’s eastern and western sections on Friday, effectively encircling the eastern side in an assault that has caused Washington to hold up the delivery of some military aid to its ally.
The White House said on Friday it was watching the Israeli operations “with concern,” although the US claims that the assault appears to be localized around the shuttered Rafah crossing.
Israel’s brutal military operation in Gaza has killed close to 35,000 Palestinians, and injured over 70,000 with thousands more missing – believed to have been buried under the rubble of buildings. The bombardment has laid waste to the coastal enclave and caused a deep humanitarian crisis.
