JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that a US threat to withhold some arms would not prevent Israel from continuing its offensive in Gaza, indicating it might proceed with an invasion of the packed city of Rafah against the wishes of its closest ally.

President Joe Biden has urged Israel not to go ahead with such an operation over fears it would exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian enclave. On Wednesday, he said the United States would not provide offensive weapons for a Rafah offensive, raising pressure on Netanyahu.

But in a statement released Thursday, Netanyahu said “if we have to stand alone, we will stand alone. If we need to, we will fight with our fingernails. But we have much more than fingernails.”
Israel’s top military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, also appeared to downplay the practical impact of any arms holdup. “The army has munitions for the missions it plans, and for the missions in Rafah, too — we have what we need,” he said in response to a question at a news conference.
Israel has repeatedly threatened to invade Rafah, where some 1.3 million Palestinians — over half the population — have sought refuge. The city in southern Gaza is also the main hub for humanitarian operations, which have been severely hindered by the closure of Gaza’s two main crossings this week.
Israel says Rafah is the last stronghold of Hamas and that the army must go in if it hopes to dismantle the group and return scores of hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.
In an earlier response to Biden’s decision, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote a post on the platform X with a heart between the words “Hamas” and “Biden.” He and other ultra-nationalist members of Netanyahu’s coalition support a large-scale Rafah operation and have threatened to bring down his government if it doesn’t happen.
Aid groups say a Rafah invasion would be catastrophic. The UN says most of the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians suffer from hunger and that northern Gaza is already experiencing “full-blown famine.”
Even the limited operation Israel launched earlier this week, in which a tank brigade captured the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, has thrown humanitarian operations into crisis.
It also complicated what had been months of efforts by the US, Qatar and Egypt to broker a ceasefire and the release of hostages. Hamas this week said it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, but Israel says the plan does not meet its “core” demands. Several days of follow-up talks appeared to end inconclusively on Thursday.
Some analysts said Biden’s tough line against Israel, and the rift between the allies, threatened to weaken Israel’s negotiating position and harden Hamas’ stances. Hamas has demanded guarantees for an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as part of any deal — steps Israel has ruled out.
“It sends a discordant message at a time when Hamas is holding out on a hostage deal in the hopes that pressure will grow on Israel and it will gain a ceasefire without having to give anything in return,” said the Israel Policy Forum, a pro-Israel organization based in New York.
The war began with Hamas’ surprise attack into southern Israel, in which it killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 250 hostage. The militants are still holding some 100 captives and the remains of more than 30 after most of the rest were released during a ceasefire last year.
The war has killed over 34,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel’s offensive, waged with US-supplied munitions, has caused widespread devastation and forced some 80 percent of Gaza’s population to flee their homes.
Israel’s capture of the Rafah crossing Tuesday forced the closure of a key entry point for fuel, and it’s unclear when it will reopen. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it only has enough stocks to maintain operations for a few days and has started rationing.
Israel reopened its side of the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing — Gaza’s main cargo terminal — after a rocket attack over the weekend, but UNRWA, the main provider of aid in Gaza, says aid cannot be brought in on the Palestinian side because of the security situation.
A recently reopened route in the north is still functioning, but only 60 trucks entered on Tuesday, far below the 500 that entered Gaza each day before the war.
The first aid ship bound for an American-built floating pier to be installed in Gaza departed early Thursday. But it’s unclear when that corridor will be up and running, and even then it won’t be able to handle as much aid as Gaza’s two main land crossings.
Maj. Pete Nguyen, a Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday that parts of the pier are still in the Israeli port of Ashdod awaiting more favorable seas before being moved into position off Gaza. He said the US vessel Sagamore, which left Cyprus, would transport aid to another ship, the Roy P. Benavidez, which is off the coast of Gaza.
“In the coming days, the US will commence an international community-backed effort to expand the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza using a floating pier,” he said.
 

CAIRO/RAFAH/WASHINGTON: Israeli tanks and warplanes bombarded areas of Rafah on Thursday, Palestinian residents said, after President Joe Biden said the United States would withhold weapons from Israel if its forces mount a major invasion of the southern Gaza city.
A senior Israeli official said that the latest round of indirect negotiations in Cairo to halt hostilities had ended and Israel would proceed with its operation in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip as planned.
Israel has submitted to mediators its reservations about a Hamas proposal for a hostage release deal and the Israeli delegation was returning from the Egyptian capital, the official added.
In Gaza, Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters fired anti-tank rockets and mortars at Israeli tanks massed on the eastern outskirts of the city.
Residents and medics in Rafah, the biggest urban area in Gaza not yet overrun by Israeli ground forces, said an Israeli attack by a mosque killed at least three people and wounded others in the eastern Brazil neighborhood.
Video footage from the scene showed the minaret lying in the rubble, two bodies wrapped in blankets and a wounded man being carried away.
On the city’s eastern edge, residents said a helicopter opened fire, while drones hovered above houses in several areas, some close to rooftops.
Israel says Hamas militants are hiding in Rafah, where the population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of Gazans seeking refuge from bombardments elsewhere in the coastal enclave, and it needs to eliminate them for its own security.
One of the displaced, Mohammad Abder-Rahman, said he feared the Israeli bombardments presaged an invasion of the city.
“It reminds me of what happened before Israeli tanks stormed our residential areas in Gaza City, heavy bombardment usually allows tanks to roll toward places they intend to invade,” the 42-year-old told Reuters via a messaging app.
Ceasefire talks in Egypt’s capital made some headway but no deal was reached, according to two Egyptian security sources.
The Hamas delegation left for Doha for consultations, blaming Israel for the lack of agreement so far.
Israel has said it is open to a truce, but has rejected demands for an end to the war as it has vowed to demolish Hamas.
Biden, who says Israel has not produced a convincing plan to safeguard civilians in Rafah, issued his starkest warning yet against a full ground invasion.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah, ... I’m not supplying the weapons,” Biden told CNN in an interview on Wednesday.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 80,000, most of them civilians, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said.
It launched its offensive in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Israel on Oct. 7 in which they killed about 1,200 people and abducted 252. Some 128 hostages remain in Gaza and 36 have been declared dead, according to the latest Israeli figures.

80,000 PALESTINIANS FLEE AGAIN THIS WEEK
On Tuesday, Israeli tanks seized the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, cutting off a vital aid route and forcing 80,000 people to flee the city this week, according to the United Nations.
“The toll on these families is unbearable. Nowhere is safe,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said in a post on X.
An Israeli military statement on Gaza operations on Thursday morning did not refer to Rafah.
The United States is by far the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, and it accelerated deliveries after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 that triggered Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Biden acknowledged that US bombs have killed Palestinian civilians in the seven-month-old offensive.
US officials have said Washington paused delivery of a shipment of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs to Israel because of the risk to civilians in Gaza.
Israel’s United Nations ambassador Gilad Erdan said the US decision to pause some weapons deliveries to Israel would significantly impair the country’s ability to neutralize Hamas’ power, according to Israeli public radio.
But Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israel’s “enemies and friends” it would do whatever necessary achieve its war aims in Gaza, underlining the scale of the standoff.
Israel kept up tank and aerial strikes across Gaza and tanks advanced in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City in the north, forcing hundreds of families to flee, residents said. The Israeli military said it was securing Zeitoun, starting with a series of intelligence-based aerial strikes on approximately 25 “terror targets.”
Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza was heaving with people who had fled Rafah in recent days. Palestinian medics said two people, including a woman, were killed when a drone fired a missile at a group of people there.

CIA DIRECTOR SHUTTLES BETWEEN JERUSALEM AND CAIRO
In Cairo, delegations from Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar had been meeting since Tuesday. CIA Director William Burns has shuttled between Cairo and Jerusalem, meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday.
Izzat El-Risheq, a member of Hamas’ political office in Qatar, said the Hamas delegation had left Cairo, having reaffirmed its approval the mediators’ ceasefire proposal. The plan entails the release of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza and a number of Palestinians jailed by Israel.

MEDICAL SECTOR COLLAPSED
The closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt has prevented the evacuation of the wounded and sick and the entry of medical supplies, food trucks and fuel needed to operate hospitals, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday.
The only kidney dialysis center in the Rafah area had stopped operating due to the shelling.
“There used to be medical aid coming in, and now there is no medical aid,” said Ali Abu Khurma, a Jordanian surgeon volunteering at Al Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah.
“The entire medical sector has collapsed.”