From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Report: Israel thinks Rafah evacuation would take 4 weeks; US says four months
Major divides between the US and Israel were reportedly exposed during Monday’s virtual meeting between top officials from both governments to discuss a potential Israeli operation the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
While Israel said it would need about four weeks to evacuate the over one million Palestinians sheltering there, the senior Biden officials in the meeting said that timeline was wildly unrealistic and that the process would likely take closer to four months — an assertion that the Israeli officials flatly rejected, the Axios news site reports.
The US officials told their Israeli counterparts that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza that has deteriorated in recent months does not breed confidence in the IDF’s ability to pull off a safe evacuation of so many Palestinians within the timeframe that the military is suggesting.
“It is clear to everybody that we will have to find a middle ground here,” one source tells Axios.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned the Israeli team that the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) organization could issue a famine declaration for Gaza in the coming weeks, which would have major implications for Israel and the US.
Sullivan said this would be the third such declaration of the 21st century.
The Israeli officials in the meetings retorted that they dispute this assessment but the US counterparts pointed out that Jerusalem is the only government in the world currently rejecting the IPC’s assessments.
