‘We will fight with our fingernails’ says
Netanyahu after US threat to curb arms
Israeli prime minister says country can ‘stand alone’
and cites the ‘heroism and arms embargo’ of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
Julian
Borger in Washington and Jason Burke in Jerusalem
Thu 9 May
2024 20.47 BST
Benjamin
Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will stand alone and “fight with our
fingernails” in defiance of US threats to further restrict arms deliveries if
Israeli forces proceed with an offensive on the southern Gazan city of Rafah.
Netanyahu,
the Israeli prime minister, was speaking on Thursday after Israeli and Hamas
delegations left the ceasefire negotiations in Cairo.
It was
unclear whether the talks had broken down or simply paused, but the failure to
reach an agreement in this week’s round of meetings raised fears of an imminent
Israeli attack on Rafah.
Netanyahu
appeared to shrug off a public warning from the US president Joe Biden the
previous night that if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a major
offensive on the city the US would not provide bombs and artillery shells to
support the operation.
“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,” Netanyahu said. He noted
that Israel was approaching the 76th anniversary of its independence, which it
had to fight for. “We did not have weapons,” he said, referring to the 1948
war. “There was an arms embargo on Israel, but with great strength of spirit,
heroism and unity among us – we were victorious.”
US
officials had been hopeful that a diplomatic breakthrough could be achieved in
hostages-for-ceasefire negotiations following a Hamas announcement on Monday
that it had accepted a deal. It was unclear what specific terms it had
accepted, and Israel, though sceptical, agreed to send a delegation to Cairo to
find out.
An unnamed
senior Israeli official was quoted by Reuters on Thursday as saying that the
Israeli delegation laid out its reservations to the Hamas position, and deemed
the round of Cairo talks to have ended.
The
official said the Israeli delegation was returning from the Egyptian capital
and Israel would proceed with its operation in Rafah and other parts of the
Gaza Strip as planned.
The White
House confirmed that the CIA director, William Burns, was also leaving Cairo,
but denied that the negotiations had broken down.
“Director
Burns is departing the region as previously scheduled, but interlocutors from
other delegations are still in discussions in Cairo, so those talks are still
going on,” John Kirby, the national security spokesperson, told reporters.
“We’re going to stay engaged, in the hopes that we might be able to land
something.”
US
officials however were privately pessimistic about being able to prevent an
offensive into Rafah, which Biden said on Thursday would trigger more
restrictions on the US arms supply, specifically regarding bombs and artillery
shells.
Last week,
the administration paused the delivery of 1,800 2,000lb bombs and 1,700 500lb
bombs in an indication it is prepared to take action to stop a Rafah offensive.
The chief
IDF spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the Israeli military could
carry out its planned operations without US support. “The army has armaments
for the missions it plans, and for the missions in Rafah too. We have what we
need.”
A major
offensive on the city of Rafah would threaten the lives of more than a million
Gazans who have sought haven there and who have not received any serious
provisions in terms of shelter, food, water and medical support from Israel.
Their
survival has already been made more precarious by the closing of the two
crossings into southern Gaza, Rafah and Keren Shalom, on Monday when the IDF
began action to capture the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing, to the east of
the city.
Rafah has
run out of fuel and its hospitals are in danger of being overwhelmed, according
to medical staff.
Keren
Shalom officially reopened on Thursday, but aid trucks were unable to navigate
the roads because of security concerns and battle damage.
Meanwhile,
very little aid is entering Gaza through the northern gate at Erez, close to
where hundreds of thousands of people who have been cut off by the Israeli
offensive are in imminent danger of starvation, according to the UN and aid
agencies.
Alexandra
Saieh, the head of humanitarian policy and advocacy for Save the Children, said
access through Erez crossing had been sporadic.
“Erez never
became fully operational,” she said at an online press conference. “The
humanitarian access needed to stave off famine that was projected back in March
has not been granted.”
Cyprus
announced on Thursday that a first-aid ship had left the island to go to a
US-made floating pier, from where humanitarian assistance is supposed to be
unloaded and distributed. However, US engineers have yet to connect a causeway
to the Gaza coast, along which the aid is meant to be driven on to the land,
and there remain many unanswered questions over how provisions would then be
distributed.
US
officials said the capture of the Rafah crossing was a tactical operation with
a low number of casualties. The UN, however, said intensified IDF attacks on
the Rafah area had triggered the exodus of more than 100,000 people – the
largest movement of population in Gaza for many months. The mass displacement
of people in the event of a large-scale Rafah offensive would be far greater.
In his
remarks on Thursday, Kirby spelled out what sort of operations on Gaza city
would trigger further US restrictions on arms. “I think we all understand what
a major ground operation looks like in terms of the size of the forces
involved, the kinds of operations that would connote large forces, large
movements, a lot of civilian casualties, a lot of damaged infrastructure – as
opposed to more precise, more targeted, more limited kinds of operations, like
we are seeing right now down at the Rafah crossing.”
He added:
“A lot is going to depend on what we see Israel do in Rafah and in their
planning for Rafah.”
After his
warning of more curbs on weapons supplies, Biden faced a backlash from Israeli
and US Republican politicians, who accused him of letting Israel down in the
face of existential threats.
Bezalel
Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, wrote on X: “We must continue
the war until Hamas is totally eliminated and our hostages are back home. This
involves conquering Rafah completely and the sooner the better.”
Itamar
Ben-Gvir, another far-right minister, posted “Biden - heart emoji - Hamas” on
social media, but later said Israel should “respect our friends but also fight
our enemies without considering other factors and without compromises”.
The
populist politician’s earlier tweet prompted a reprimand from Isaac Herzog,
Israel’s president, who called Biden “a great friend of the state of Israel”
and criticised “baseless, irresponsible and insulting statements and tweets”
during a speech marking the anniversary of VE Day.
Yair Lapid,
leader of Israel’s main opposition party, called for Ben-Gvir to be fired for
“endangering every soldier in the IDF and every citizen in the state of
Israel”.
Kirby
insisted on Thursday that Israeli forces were “still getting that [weaponry],
the vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves”.
“We could
also in fact help them target the leaders, including Mr Sinwar, which we are
frankly doing with the Israelis on an ongoing basis,” Kirby added in what
appeared to be the first US confirmation that America had been providing help
to the Israelis in targeting Hamas leaders including Yahya Sinwar, the
mastermind of the 7 October attack on Israel which killed about 1,200 Israelis.
Dr Yonatan
Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, said Biden’s announcement, far from pressuring Netanyahu, could
strengthen the Israeli prime minister.
“Some are
saying Netanyahu has ruined Israel’s relationship with the US but others are
saying this shows that we are alone, and that the lesson of history is that we
can’t trust that anyone will be with us always and in every way. That’s what
Netanyahu has been saying and that’s the narrative that is dominant in the mind
of most Israelis, and so the whole issue will strengthen Netanyahu’s political
position,” Freeman said.
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