White House officials told reporters that Israel\u2019s airstrike on Rafah on Sunday that killed two senior Hamas terrorist leaders and dozens of civilians does not violate President Biden\u2019s \u2018red line,\u2019 mainly because the strike did not represent a major ground operation.<\/p>\n
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby addressed reporters during a White House press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, during which time he was asked a barrage of questions about the attack on the southern Gazan city of Rafah, and when the U.S. will change its stance on Israel\u2019s attacks.<\/p>\n
Israel conducted an airstrike on a Hamas compound in Rafah on Sunday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed.<\/p>\n
One reporter asked Kirby about the attack, which struck an encampment in a densely populated area.<\/p>\n
Kirby told the reporter the whole area of Rafah is densely populated and that a million people had evacuated the area.<\/p>\n
The reporter asked how the strike did not violate a \u2018red line\u2019 laid out by the president.<\/p>\n
\u2018We don\u2019t want to see a major ground operation,\u2019 Kirby said. \u2018We haven\u2019t seen that at this point.\u2019<\/p>\n
Kirby continued to say the White House does not want to see a single innocent life taken.<\/p>\n
Reporters continued to press Kirby on the matter, asking if Biden had a personal limit that needed to be reached before stepping in or changing his stance.<\/p>\n
\u2018The president has been very clear and very direct about what our expectations are for Israeli operations in Rafah specifically, but in Gaza\u2026we don\u2019t support, we won\u2019t support a major ground operation in Rafah,\u2019 Kirby said. \u2018And, we\u2019ve been very consistent on that, and the president said that should that occur, then it might make him have to make different decisions in terms of support. We haven\u2019t seen that happen at this point.\u2019<\/p>\n
Kirby explained that a major ground operation involved tens of thousands of troops or thousands of troops moving in a coordinated set of maneuvers against a wide variety of targets on the ground, \u2018in a massive way.\u2019<\/p>\n
U.S. officials have not seen Israeli troops move in that way, according to Kirby.<\/p>\n
He called the events on Sunday a \u2018very tragic\u2019 airstrike, and it was not the first in recent days or weeks.<\/p>\n
\u2018Nobody was asking me about red lines a week or so ago when there were other airstrikes in Rafah that didn\u2019t cause civilian casualties,\u2019 Kirby said. \u2018This is an airstrike. It\u2019s not a major ground operation. It\u2019s different. Now, again, we\u2019re not taking anything at face value, either. We\u2019re not on the ground.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was asked on MSNBC\u2019s \u2018Morning Joe\u2019 on Wednesday whether Israel had crossed the U.S. \u2018red line\u2019 for future weapons support following the strike in Rafah.<\/p>\n
Fetterman,\u00a0who has irked the left with his staunch support of Israel, said the images from the region were \u2018heartbreaking,\u2019 but they represent a hard truth about the conflict.<\/p>\n
Fetterman called Israel a key ally and said he would absolutely trust and work with someone like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Hamas leaders and other key players in the region.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s a very difficult situation in Gaza. But I do believe that Hamas [cannot] be allowed to operate if there\u2019s going to be any enduring peace in this situation,\u2019 Fetterman said.<\/p>\n
Fox News\u2019 Nikolas Lanum, Bradford Betz and Trey Yingst contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n
White House officials told reporters that Israel\u2019s airstrike on Rafah on Sunday that killed two senior Hamas terrorist leaders and dozens of civilians does not violate President Biden\u2019s \u2018red line,\u2019 mainly because the strike did not represent a major ground operation. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby addressed reporters during a White House <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19766,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}