WASHINGTON — President Biden said Wednesday that “I’m not supplying the weapons” if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moves forward with a full attack on the Hamas-controlled city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
“I made clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gotten into Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a rare sit-down interview.
The 81-year-old president’s threat followed days of obfuscation by the White House about reports that the administration had halted at least one shipment of powerful precision bombs, which Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed in testimony to Congress earlier Wednesday was “paused.”
Biden has warned Israel for weeks not to attack the final major bastion of Hamas power and repeated the message Monday in a call to the Israeli head of government.
More than a million displaced Gazans are believed to reside in and around Rafah.
Biden told Burnett the arms denied to Israel could expand to artillery shells as well.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden said.
“It’s just wrong. We’re not gonna — we’re not gonna supply the weapons and artillery shells used.”
He added that “I’ve made it clear to [Netanyahu] and the war cabinet, they’re not going to get our support if in fact they go into these population centers.
Biden said he would, however, “continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks like came out of — in the Middle East recently.”
The president, who is regularly heckled by anti-Israel protesters who have dubbed him “Genocide Joe,” has for months criticized Israel for allegedly doing too little to avoid killing civilians and aid workers in Gaza.
On Tuesday, however, Biden gave a pro-Israel speech at an event commemorating the Holocaust, saying that protesters were “forgetting” that Hamas started the war by killing about 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7.
“Too many people [are] denying downplaying, rationalizing and ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7, including Hamas’s appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews. It’s absolutely despicable and it must stop,” he said in that speech.
Polls show Biden’s re-election is at risk due to backlash over his pro-Israel stance from key Democratic constituencies including younger voters, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.
Netanyahu has pushed back on Biden’s mounting criticism.
“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” Netanyahu said in a defiant speech Sunday at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
“Eighty years ago in the Holocaust, the Jewish people were totally defenseless against those who sought our destruction. No nation came to our aid. Today, we again face enemies bent on our destruction,” Netanyahu said.
“I say to the leaders of the world: No amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself… We will defeat our genocidal enemies.
“‘Never again’ is now.”
