After the US withheld a sale of weapons as a reminder to its best Middle Eastern allies not to enter Rafah, in southern Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a defiant tone toward President Joe Biden.
In a second, aggressive picture on the social media site X, Netanyahu said:” If we have to walk alone, we may have only” and “fight teeth and nail”. When he and Dr. Phil McGraw, the American talk show host, exchanged, he then switched to a more accommodating view.
” I’ve known Joe Biden for many years, 40 years and more”, Netanyahu said in the interview Thursday on” Dr. Phil Primetime” broadcast on Merit Street Media. ” We usually had contracts, but we’ve had our disputes and we’ve been able to overcome them. I’m hoping they can be overcome at this point.
Netanyahu called on Israel to enter Rafah to defeat Hamas, the US-designated criminal organization that abducted about 250 Israelis and killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7. If allowed to survive in Rafah, Hamas did “murder repeatedly,” he said.
” We have to reach victory”, he said. ” That means we have to eliminate all these battalions, which we will. That is very opposed to, but we will get past it.
Netanyahu promised that Israel would do everything in its power to prevent attacks on Rafah, where more than a million persons are sheltering, from occurring. He even criticized the “madness” of pro- Arab rallies on US university campuses, saying protesters are” supporting genocide”, adding that this reflected” the sad condition of American higher knowledge”.
Biden called on Israel to stop further shipments of offensive weapons to Israel on Wednesday, calling any potential loss of human life” only wrong” in response to a ground invasion of Rafah.
In an appointment with CNN, Biden stated that” we’re going to continue to make certain Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to problems that came out of the Middle East recently.” ” But it’s just bad. We wo n’t provide any weapons or artillery shells.
Like Netanyahu, US officials followed strong censure with more conciliatory comment on Thursday.
Netanyahu should abstain from an assault that might increase the humanitarian crises in Gaza, according to White House officials, who insisted that the US was a good ally.
The sale of about 3,500 bombs, according to official John Kirby, was halted but the management did n’t stop, he claimed, because it was only armed with specific munitions that might increase the number of civilian fatalities in Gaza.
” The claims that apparently we’re walking away from Israel fly in the face of the information”, Kirby told reporters.
There were also evidence that Netanyahu and the White House had n’t allegedly engaged in a public altercation.
Initial US plans were to tell the Israeli government in secret that the US intended to halt the bombing in order to put stress on Netanyahu, but they decided against doing so until there was a significant Israeli incursion into Rafah’s metropolitan areas. However, according to people with knowledge of the situation, Israeli leaders made the program fail, according to those who spoke to the matter.
