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The White House said that Israel's deadly airstrike on a tent camp for displaced people in Rafah over the weekend did not cross President Joe Biden's "red line," calling into question the seriousness of Biden's threat to cut off military aid.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a briefing Tuesday that Israel’s current attacks on Rafah do not constitute the “major ground operation” that Biden had warned against and that the United States would not change its policy on Israel's war in Gaza, even after the Israeli airstrike on the tent camp in Rafah on Sunday killed at least 45 people.
“A major ground operation is, you know, thousands and thousands of troops moving in a maneuvered, concentrated, coordinated way against a variety of targets on the ground,” Kirby said.
Sunday's airstrike sparked a fire that killed dozens and injured at least 200 people, Gaza officials said. Horrific footage from the aftermath of the strike shows burned bodies and what appeared to be a toddler without a head. The images sparked global outrage and increased pressure on the White House to end weapons shipments to Israel.
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel was investigating the strike, which was aimed at two senior Hamas militants and ignited a fire that was "unexpected and unintended." NBC News reported that an Israeli official and a U.S. official separately said a fuel tank may have been struck.
Yet, Israeli tanks moved into central Rafah on Tuesday, raising fears of more attacks on the besieged population, a large number of whom have been repeatedly displaced. Kirby said that the Israeli tanks were operating on a strip of land on the Egypt-Gaza border and "not in the town proper."
"Everything we're seeing — and we can't see everything — but everything that we can see tells us that they are not moving in in a major ground operation in population centers in the center of Rafah," he added.
Biden had said earlier this month that he would halt weapons shipments to Israel if it entered "population centers" in Rafah. Now, as Israel presses on with weeks of attacks on the densely populated city in defiance of Biden's warnings, the White House is waffling on semantics about the "red line" that he set.
When asked at the briefing how many more "charred corpses" Biden has to see before considering a policy change, Kirby said he took "offense to the question."
"No civilian casualties is the right number of civilian casualties, and this is not something we've turned a blind eye to," he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in an interview with a local public broadcaster Wednesday that he expected military operations in Gaza to continue through the end of the year at least.