Biden urged Israel's Netanyahu to protect civilians in Rafah, White House says
Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that Israel should not proceed with a military operation in Rafah without a plan to ensure the safety of the roughly 1 million people sheltering there, the White House said.
Biden's call with Netanyahu happened days after the U.S. leader told reporters that Israel's military response in the Gaza Strip was «over the top,» reflecting growing concern and frustration over the rising death toll of civilians in the Palestinian enclave.
The U.S. president reaffirmed the shared goal of seeing Hamas defeated and ensuring the long-term security of Israel, but also called for «urgent and specific steps» to increase the throughput and consistency of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza, the White House said in a statement.
Aid agencies say an assault on Rafah, located in the southern part of Gaza on the border with Egypt, would be catastrophic. Israel's military ordered civilians to flee south before previous assaults on Gaza's cities, but now there is no obvious place to go and aid agencies have said many people could die.
Biden «reaffirmed his view that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there,» the White House said.
The two leaders also discussed ongoing efforts to secure the release of all remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the Islamist militant group's Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the White House said.
