For months, the Biden administration has pleaded with Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians, who have borne the brunt of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas.
But now, on the eve of Israel’s long-threatened major assault on the city of Rafah, the gulf between what the United States recommends and what Israel seems determined to do could not be wider.
The list of suggestions from the Biden administration is long. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said this week that the United States wanted Israel to carry out “more precise” operations and that the 2,000-pound bombs it has been using in densely populated Gaza “could create a lot of collateral damage.” ”.
U.S. officials also want Israel to lean more toward sending special operations troops to carry out targeted raids against Hamas leaders and fighters, rather than relying on aerial bombardment and tank campaigns.
But the whole advice boils down to this: The United States wants Israel to get Palestinian civilians out of the way and do more to help humanitarian aid arrive, before launching any raid on Rafah. In fact, if it were up to the Biden administration, Israel would not enter Rafah at all.
“We would certainly like to see no major fighting occur in Rafah,” Austin said at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. He then linked Israel’s actions in Rafah to future American arms aid.
At a critical moment in the war between Israel and Hamas, senior US officials suspended a shipment of bombs and threatened to withhold more weapons shipments if Israel presses ahead with its plans for Rafah.
The Biden administration has also said Israel must do more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza, where more than 34,000 people have been killed and more than 77,000 injured, according to the territory’s health authorities. Additionally, aid groups say 1.1 million Gazans are suffering from catastrophic hunger.
Both Mr. Austin and Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as other senior U.S. military officials, have pointed to past U.S. efforts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan as examples of what they think. Israeli forces should and should not do it. Of course, civilians died in those operations, but not at the rate at which Palestinians died in Gaza.
But in recent days, and to the dismay of Biden administration officials, Israel pressed ahead with its campaign, ordering 110,000 civilians to leave Rafah, carrying out airstrikes on targets on the outskirts of the city, sending in tanks and taking the border crossing with Egypt.
Gen. Brown restated the administration’s message Wednesday during a call with Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi. The two men did not discuss the pause in weapons shipments, General Brown said in a brief interview in Tampa, Florida, on Thursday.
The Israeli military, he said, has not yet provided the Pentagon with a complete and detailed plan for the Rafah operation. His advice to his Israeli counterpart, he said, was “to make sure they are paying attention to the civilians.”
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said Thursday that Israeli forces had been urging civilians to get out of the way. Before deploying tanks at the Rafah crossing this week, Israel sent out leaflets and text messages, and made Arabic media broadcasts asking people to evacuate the area, he said.
“As we have said since day 1: our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza,” he added.
Israel has been using large munitions, such as 2,000-pound bombs, to collapse tunnels and restrict the ability of Hamas leaders and fighters to move in its underground network, unlike the small diameter 250-pound bombs, which U.S. officials They tend to stand out. Large bombs, while more effective against tunnels, pose a greater risk to civilians.
Instead of sending in tanks and conducting sweeping operations, which have destroyed Gaza City and Khan Younis, Pentagon officials have advised the Israel Defense Forces to send special operations troops for nighttime strikes targeting specific Hamas members. .
“We would not have been dropping 2,000-pound or even 500-pound bombs on civilians,” said Lt. Gen. Mark C. Schwartz, a retired U.S. Special Operations commander who served as U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Authority. Palestine, he said in an email. “We would have developed a plan to address internal migration of civilians, ensuring there was somewhere safe to go, and not simply forcing internal displacement without any provision.”
American military officials have also told their Israeli counterparts, in secure calls and in person, to consider surrounding Rafah – rather than invading it – to cut off supplies to Hamas militants, including food and ammunition.
In such an operation, Israeli forces would first try to move Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way, to the north, east or even closer to the Mediterranean Sea, a senior administration official said in an interview.
It would be an extremely difficult operation, the official acknowledged. For one thing, it would require an extensive messaging campaign to tell civilians where and when to go. Those civilians could be attacked by Hamas when they tried to leave, officials said, in the same way that the Islamic State attacked civilians trying to flee Mosul in the 2017 battle for ISIS’s last stronghold in Iraq.
In addition, senior Hamas leaders are believed to be hiding in fortified tunnels deep in Gaza. Israeli and American officials say they believe Hamas leaders are using Israeli hostages as human shields in the underground network.
An Israeli official said in an interview that Hamas leaders knew Israel would try to avoid harming civilians and were using it to their advantage.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
But American officials say Israel is not doing enough. “A key part of the campaign has to be separating the people of Gaza from Hamas,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, former head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said in an interview. “It’s not obvious to me that they’re trying to do that.”
General Votel was the head of Central Command during the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In Syria in particular, he said, U.S. and coalition forces worked to return civilians to their homes, to restore basic services like water and electricity, and even to get people back to work “and participating in their own communities,” all while attempting to target remaining Islamic State militants in raids.
Asked how Israel could do that in the midst of a bombing campaign, he said: “Maybe we won’t do a bombing campaign.”
His comments echoed those of senior Pentagon officials, who consistently say that even if Israel follows US recommendations, an operation in Rafah would still result in hundreds or thousands of civilian deaths.
“Israel, for many reasons that I agree with, has really focused on Hamas, and I understand that, but it has done so to the detriment of the people they are trying to separate from Hamas,” General Votel said. . “And it’s not clear to me that they value that part of the operation.”
Gen. Votel’s successor at Central Command, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., said Israeli commanders would eventually have to make a critical decision: surround Hamas’s last stronghold and seal it off so thousands of Hamas fighters and their leaders they couldn’t escape. or be reinforced and prepare to fight a long and bloody battle to the death. Or Israeli commanders could allow Hamas leaders to flee but then pursue them, eventually, after Israeli security forces take the city in fierce but brief fighting.
Using intelligence gleaned from an array of sensors and spies, Israeli commanders could use targeted airstrikes to collapse parts of Hamas’s vast tunnel network and deploy ground forces to methodically clear the insurgents block by block, General McKenzie said. Special operations forces would target top Hamas leaders, such as Yahya Sinwar, but such missions would be dangerous for hostages.
“They have to capture Sinwar,” General McKenzie said. “The Israelis cannot claim victory without killing or capturing him.”
A U.S. official said the administration began reviewing arms shipments last month when it became clear that Israel appeared to be making a decision about an operation in Rafah. Biden initially took the position that Israel should not attack Rafah without a plan to effectively minimize civilian casualties, but in recent weeks the White House has increasingly indicated that it did not believe such a plan was possible.
During the Senate hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., questioned Mr. Austin about the pause in arms shipments, saying, “I am concerned about the suggestion that U.S. support is conditional.”
Austin insisted that U.S. support for Israel remained “strong,” but said the administration firmly believed that “Israel should not launch a major attack on Rafah without accountability and protection of civilians in that battlespace.” .
As Austin spoke, protesters in the audience chanted “Free Palestine” and raised their hands, which were painted red.