PM: I made it clear to Biden there’s no way to destroy Hamas without Rafah ground op

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells a powerful Knesset committee that the IDF will go into Rafah in a ground operation, and that he told US President Joe Biden as much in their phone call yesterday.

“We have a disagreement with the Americans about the need to enter Rafah,” Netanyahu tells the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “Not about the need to eliminate Hamas — the need to enter Rafah. We do not see a way to eliminate Hamas militarily without destroying these remaining battalions. We are determined to do it. ”

“I made it clear to the president in our conversation, in the clearest way, that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah,” says Netanyahu. “There is no way to do it, except by going in on the ground.”

Netanyahu adds that the two leaders agreed on a mechanism for the Americans to share their ideas on humanitarian aid and the evacuation of civilians, a concern that Israel shares.

“We need to complete the military elimination of Hamas,” he explains. “There is no substitute for that, you can’t go around it, you can’t say ‘we’ll destroy 80% of Hamas, we’ll [leave] 20%,’ because that 20% will reorganize and retake the Strip, and of course they will pose a renewed threat to Israel, and of course it will also be a victory for the broader axis that threatens us — the Iranian axis.”

Netanyahu also acknowledges that Israel is locked in a diplomatic struggle alongside the military struggle, in which pressure on Israel is growing.