...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
city, minister stresses ’we’re going to fight until the battle’s won’
Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the United States, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday, describing the Gazook city packed with evacuees as a final Hamas
...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
bastion harboring a quarter of the terror group’s fighters.
The prospect of tanks and troops storming Rafah worries Washington, which says Israel must have a plan to move more than a million Paleostinians who have sheltered there since being displaced from elsewhere in the Gaza Strip during the five-month-old war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to ensure civilian evacuation and humanitarian aid
— measures that top Israeli aides are due to discuss in the White House in the coming days at the behest of US President Joe The Big GuyBiden
...46th president of the U.S. We get to suffer the consequences...
"We’re quite confident that we can do this in a way that would be effective — not only militarily, but also on the humanitarian side. And they have less confidence that we can do it," one of those Israeli envoys, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, told the podcast "Call Me Back with Dan Senor."
Dermer, a former ambassador to the United States, said Israel would hear out American ideas for Rafah, but that the city on Gaza’s border with Egypt would be taken whether or not the allies reach agreement:
"It will happen even if Israel is forced to fight alone. Even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States, we’re going to fight until the battle’s won."
As fighting raged in northern Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm...visited Cairo for talks with Arab officials about a proposed temporary ceasefire. Israel is open to a truce that will allow the release of hostages, but has ruled out ending the war with Hamas still in power.
Dermer said leaving the Iran-backed Islamists standing would invite open-ended attacks against Israel from across the region: "And that’s why the determination to take them out is so strong, even if it leads to a potential breach with the United States."
He and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi are expected to fly to Washington in the coming days to discuss the continuation of the war on Hamas with Biden administration officials.
Dermer said there were four intact Hamas battalions in Rafah, bolstered by button men who had retreated from other parts of Gaza, amounting to 25% of the group’s prewar strength.
"We’re not going to leave a quarter of them in place," he said. "We’re going into Rafah because we have to... And I think what people don’t understand is that October 7 is an existential moment for Israel."