The United States does not assess that the Israeli military has conducted a major ground invasion into Rafah, administration officials reiterated on Tuesday.
The latest assessment, which was provided first by Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh and followed up by National Security Council coordinator John Kirby, came days after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah led to the deaths of dozens of civilians.
“We still don’t believe that a major ground operation in Rafah is warranted. We still don’t want to see the Israelis, as we say, smash into Rafah with large units over large pieces of territory. We still believe that and we haven’t seen that at this point,” Kirby said. “As a result of this strike on Sunday, I have no policy changes to speak to.”
President Joe Biden warned earlier this month that he would halt offensive weapons sales to Israel if it carried out actions in Rafah the U.S. opposed, like a full-scale ground campaign, which, as Kirby described on Tuesday, would include “thousands and thousands of troops moving in a maneuvered, concentrated, coordinated way. It’s a variety of targets on the ground.”
Israel has carried out multiple airstrikes in Rafah in recent weeks, though the strike this weekend, according to the Israel Defense Forces, resulted in a secondary explosion and fire that killed about 45 people and injured more than 200 others, according to Gaza officials.
“The strike was conducted using two munitions with small warheads suited for this targeted strike. We are talking about munitions with 17 kilograms of explosive material,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said, adding, “Following this strike, a large fire ignited for reasons still being investigated. Our munition alone could not have ignited a fire of this size.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike a “tragic mistake.” The IDF is investigating the incident.
The U.S. has sought for multiple months to convince Israel not to conduct a full-scale military operation in Rafah due to the more than 1 million Palestinians who fled there during the war. The U.S. and several other international leaders stressed that Israel’s operations could result in massive numbers of civilian casualties if they are not adequately safeguarded.
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Kirby acknowledged that this strike was broadly in line with how the U.S. wants Israel to target Hamas in Rafah given the apparent use of small, precise bombs, minus the apparent secondary explosion.
“This one had tragic consequences, but it was in the use of munitions that they said they used in the targets they were going after, not unlike and not out of character of the other airstrikes they have participated in, in Rafah in recent days and weeks,” Kirby said. “So it wasn’t out of that scope, but obviously it had a different outcome here, which is incredibly tragic.”
