The United States ruling class will not stop arms shipments to Israel in response to a recent airstrike on a refugee camp in Rafah. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has told reporters that the U.S. does not consider Israel’s operations in Rafah to be an invasion, and so there have been no red lines crossed.
“As a result of this strike on Sunday, I have no policy changes to speak to,” Kirby said at a briefing on Tuesday. “It just happened. The Israelis are going to investigate it. We’re going to be taking great interest in what they find in that investigation. And we’ll see where it goes from there.”
“We still don’t believe that a major ground operation in Rafah is warranted,” he said. “We still don’t want to see the Israelis, as we say, smash into Rafah with large units over large pieces of territory. We still believe that, and we haven’t seen that at this point.”
At least 45 Palestinians were killed when Israeli jets bombed the southern Gazan city of Rafah on Sunday, causing a large fire at a camp housing displaced people. The Israeli military insisted that it used “precision munitions” to kill two Hamas commanders, but media reports suggest that shrapnel from the strike ignited a fuel tank near the intended target.
Israel Defense Forces Advance In Rafah
Earlier this month, U.S. ruler Joe Biden said that he would halt shipments of bombs and artillery shells to Israel if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to launch a ground invasion of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. While Israeli forces have sent tanks into Rafah’s eastern neighborhoods and taken control of the border crossing between the city and Egypt, Kirby said that Washington does not consider these operations a full-scale invasion.
Israel does not appear to be phased at all by the U.S. ruling class’s decisions and has been unafraid to advance war and “act alone,” if need be to accomplish its goal of the total elimination of the terrorist group, Hamas.
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