Netanyahu maintains IDF will enter Rafah despite international pressure
Israel’s allies, including the US, have expressed intense concern regarding a potential IDF incursion into the southern Gazan city without a clear plan to protect civilians

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday assured soldiers that the military will operate in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah despite international pressure to hold off on such action.
During a visit with fighters in the Nitzan 636 Field Intelligence Battalion near Jerusalem, the premier said: “While you and the IDF are preparing to continue fighting, there is international pressure to keep us from entering Rafah and finishing the job. As prime minister of Israel, I am deflecting these pressures, and I will continue to do so.”
Israel says Rafah is the last major Hamas stronghold in the Palestinian enclave after the Israel Defense Forces systematically dismantled and destroyed the terror group’s battalions throughout most of the Strip.
The premier has been adamant about the IDF’s need to push into Rafah for weeks, having claimed in late February that total victory in Gaza would be “weeks away” once the incursion begins.
But more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have sought refuge in the southern city on the Gaza-Egypt border as war has ravaged much of the territory. Israel’s allies, including the US, have expressed intense reservations regarding a potential IDF incursion into the southern Gazan city, warning of the potential for massive harm to civilians.
The US has previously said Israel must show it has a plan to protect civilians when it launches a ground offensive in Rafah. And US officials told the Politico news site in a Monday report that US President Joe Biden said he would consider placing conditions on future military aid to Israel if its military moves ahead with a planned offensive without an American green light.

Israel has said it is working on a plan to protect civilians. Wednesday saw IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari outline the plan’s major points in a public presentation.
US officials subsequently relayed to their Israeli counterparts that the Biden administration would support a limited operation in Gaza’s southernmost city that would prioritize “high-value” Hamas targets in and underneath the city instead of a large-scale offensive, Politico reported, citing four US officials.

An Israeli official told the outlet that some kind of offensive or operation in Rafah is inevitable.
“At the end of the day, we cannot win this war without defeating Hamas’s battalions in Rafah,” the official said.
The war with Hamas in Gaza began on October 7, when thousands of Hamas terrorists from the Strip invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages.
Israel responded with a military campaign to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza and free the hostages, 130 of whom remain in captivity (along with four others held from before the war).
Agencies contributed to this report.