The US president has previously warned that Israel would cross a “red line” if it attacked the border town of Rafah – a city where 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge – with ground troops.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he does not care about Biden’s calls and intends to ignore them.
The US is Israel’s most important ally and a frequent supplier of weapons systems and financial aid to the country. It has also sent its own warships to support Israel militarily.
Recently, however, relations between Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have become increasingly frosty – as Biden and his administration feel that Israel is deliberately ignoring their calls to de-escalate the invasion of Gaza.
Recently, Biden announced that Israel would be crossing a “red line” if it entered the southern Gaza town of Rafah – a town that Israel has already forced 1.3 million Palestinian refugees to flee to and which has been declared a “safe zone.
After the majority of Gaza’s population sought refuge in Rafah, Netanyahu’s regime declared that the city was no longer considered a safe zone at all – citing the presence of Hamas fighters in the city who attack Israeli targets from there.
“No Palestinian state”
– We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again, Netanyahu declared in an interview with Politico.
Netanyahu went on to claim that the Israeli people support his position of “resounding rejection” of attempts to “impose” a Palestinian state on Israel.
– The positions that I espouse are supported by the overwhelming majority of Israelis who say to you after October 7: ‘We don’t want to see a Palestinian state’.
It should also be noted that the Biden administration has been heavily criticized for not doing enough to pressure Israel to stop the invasion – on the contrary, it has blocked several international efforts to achieve an immediate cease-fire.
