Biden tells Netanyahu Rafah operation would be ‘mistake’ — after praising Schumer’s speech calling for ‘new election’ in Israel
President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday that sending Israeli troops into the southern Gaza city of Rafah would be a “mistake” — just three days after Biden praised Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s incendiary speech calling for the Jewish state to hold a “new election” and oust Netanyahu following the war against Hamas.
“A major ground operation would be a mistake,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that Biden, 81, stressed to Netanyahu, citing concerns about civilian safety in the city of more than 150,000 near the Egyptian border.
Biden didn’t make “threats,” Sullivan added during a White House press briefing, but had a “very businesslike” tone with the Israeli PM while both condemning the terror group Hamas and urging Israel to have a “strategy that works.”
“A military plan cannot succeed without an integrated humanitarian plan and political plan. And the president has repeatedly made the point that continuing military operations need to be continued to a clear strategic end game,” Sullivan added.
Netanyahu gave no indication of any friction between the two leaders, who spoke Monday for the first time since Feb. 15, in a brief Hebrew-language video released by his office.
“This evening I spoke to US President Joe Biden,” the 74-year-old said. “We spoke about the latest developments relating to the war, including Israel’s obligation to achieve all of its military aims such as liquidating Hamas, securing the release of all of our hostages, and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel — while at the same time providing needed humanitarian assistance that helps us achieve these aims.”
Last week, Biden said in a MSNBC interview that Israeli forces entering Rafah would constitute a “red line,” before backtracking to say there was “no red line [at which] I’m going to cut off all weapons so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them.”
The next day, Netanyahu said he would order troops into Rafah, vowing: “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave.”
On Friday, Biden told reporters that Schumer had delivered a “good speech” after the Brooklyn Democrat said on the Senate floor the previous day that Netanyahu and “radical” members of his security cabinet were an “obstacle” to peace.
“Senator Schumer contacted my staff, my senior staffer, that he was going to make that speech,” Biden said during an Oval Office meeting with Ireland Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
“I’m not going to elaborate on the speech,” added the president at the time. “He made a good speech, and I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans.”
Schumer’s comments drew a rebuke from Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu’s rivals, as well as most Jewish American groups and congressional Republicans.
“I think what he said is totally inappropriate,” Netanyahu said of Schumer during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
“It’s inappropriate for a — to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there,” the Israeli PM added. “That’s something that Israel, the Israeli public does on its own, and we’re not a banana republic.
“I think the only government that we should be working on to bring down now is the terrorist tyranny in Gaza, the Hamas tyranny that murdered over 1,000 Israelis, including some dozens of Americans, and is holding Americans and Israelis hostage. That’s what we should be focused on.”
Sullivan hit back at Netanyahu’s comments during his appearance at the White House podium on Monday.
“Kind of an interesting irony, which is you have the prime minister speaking on American television about his concerns about Americans interfering in Israeli politics,” the national security adviser said, “which we don’t do nearly as much as they speak into ours.”
Netanyahu is in his third stint as Israel’s head of government, having held the premiership from 1996 through 1999, and again from 2009 until 2021.
Additional reporting by Ariel Zilber
