Amid Impeachment Threat, White House Defends Decision to ‘Pause’ Weapons to Israel
Administration won’t support Netanyahu’s planned Rafah assault
The Biden administration is defending its decision to “pause” the transfer of high-power weapons to Israel ahead of that country’s stated plan to attack the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge.
President Biden, already, is seeing fierce blowback over his decision to hold up — so far— one weapons shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel. At least one Republican senator is calling the move grounds for impeachment.
Administration officials have emphasized that the United States continues to send Israel a variety of weapons and is committed to its defense. But that support for an assault on Rafah is off the table.
Biden, for weeks, has been warning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Rafah, which remains the only refuge left for Palestinians in Gaza.
Nearly 35,000 Palestinians — mostly children and women — have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its military operations following the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas.
Gazans now are facing serious disease and famine as a result of Israel’s military campaign.
“What we do not support is a major ground operation in Rafah — a city now sheltering over 1 million people — since we believe there are better alternative ways to go after Hamas,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday, in a press gaggle aboard Air Force One on a presidential trip to Mountain View, Calif. “The President has said that publicly and has communicated that repeatedly and directly to the prime minister.
“What the president made clear on CNN is that we do not want to provide materiel support to such an operation, describing how we have held a shipment of high-payload, unguided munition as we discuss with Israel our concerns about their use in dense urban environments,” she added. “For him, this is straightforward.”
Many Democrats have been pushing Biden for some time to do more to protect Gaza. But Republicans — and even some pro-Israel Democrats — are condemning the president for this decision to hold up a weapons shipment to Israel.
A group of Republican senators held a press conference Thursday, denouncing the move. Sen Tom Cotton (R-Ark) went so far as to compare Biden’s decision to the decision by Donald Trump as president to withhold US military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to coerce the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
That action led to the first impeachment of Trump.
“Now so people say Joe Biden is doing this for his reelection, which would be bad enough. It would also, I have to add, be grounds for impeachment, under the Democrats’ Trump-Ukraine standard, withholding foreign aid to help one’s reelection,” Cotton said. “But I’m afraid it’s also worse than that. Joe Biden and Israel-hating Democrats are using electoral concerns as a pretext to do what they’ve always wanted to do, to cut Israel loose.”
The Biden administration disputes that characterization as the United States remains committed to the defense of Israel, according to Jean-Pierre.
“What we are talking about is a particular operation — the Rafah operation. Again, 1.5 million people seeking refuge, to be more exact, in Rafah. And we want to make sure that they are protected,” she said. “But we will be committed — we are committed, the president is committed — to Israel’s security and able to defend itself, and that is ironclad. That has not changed. That has not changed.”
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