US will not support Rafah offensive ‘currently envisioned by Israel’

The US will not support the Rafah offensive “currently envisioned by Israel” because it has yet to see a credible and implementable plan to protect the over one million Palestinians sheltering there, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller says.

Speaking hours after Israel began ordering the evacuation of eastern neighborhoods in Rafah, Miller says such an offensive would “dramatically increase the suffering of the Palestinian people,” lead to an increase in the loss of civilian life and would disrupt the delivery of humanitarian assistance, which largely comes through the areas that the IDF plans to target, Miller says.

The spokesperson notes that internal distribution lines have not been established in the areas where civilians are being urged to flee, adding that setting up those mechanisms will be difficult, if not impossible, in the middle of a war.

Miller says the IDF evacuation orders impact some 100,000 Palestinians, but others are likely to join if they see large amounts of civilians fleeing around them. “The problem now is there are such limited places for them to go inside Gaza and there is no effective way to distribute aid to them and make sure they have access to shelter, access to sanitation, in the places that they would go.”