White House Says No Policy Changes After Israeli Strike in Rafah
When Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah this week, seizing control of its vital border crossing with neighboring Egypt, they appeared to be edging dangerously close to President Joe Biden’s red line. For months, the American president voiced his opposition to an Israeli invasion of the densely-populated city absent a clear and credible plan to safeguard the more than 1 million people sheltering there. But he never articulated exactly what price the Israeli government would pay if it went ahead with the offensive anyway, as it repeatedly said it would.
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00:00 Has the president seen the images? I don't know I can't speak to what he has
00:04 absolutely been he's been kept apprised throughout the weekend on this. So you're
00:08 saying the tent encampment that was first struck is considered a densely
00:13 populated area? The whole area of Rafa, Ed, is densely populated. Now there has
00:19 been a million or so who have evacuated Rafa proper but it's not like they're
00:25 going all that far away the whole area is densely populated. So how does this not violate the red line
00:29 that the president laid out? As I said we don't want to see a major ground
00:33 operation we haven't seen that at this point. How many more charred corpses does
00:41 he have to see before the president considers a change in policy? We don't want to see a
00:46 single more innocent life taken and I kind of take a little offense at the
00:50 question no civilian casualties is the right number of civilian casualties and
00:55 this is not something that we've turned a blind eye to nor has it been something
00:58 we've ignored or neglected to raise with our Israeli counterparts including Ed
01:03 this weekend as a result of this particular strike. Now they're
01:06 investigating it so let's let them investigate it and see what they come up
01:10 with. But the president doesn't have like a personal limit to this? The president has been very clear and very direct about what our
01:19 expectations are for Israeli operations in Rafa specifically but in Gaza writ
01:24 large we don't support we won't support a major ground operation in Rafa and
01:31 we've again been very consistent on that and the president said that should that
01:35 occur then it might make him have to make different decisions in terms of
01:40 support we haven't seen that happen at this point. Why not have him come out and say that himself?
01:43 The president has been speaking to leaders throughout the region on a
01:49 regular basis he has been addressing you guys in various fora you've got plenty
01:53 of opportunities to talk to the president including I might add in a
01:55 press conference last week. What is the administration going to do whether it
01:59 was a tragic mistake or a deliberate? Well let's see what the investigation says. So you're going to wait for the Israelis to investigate themselves?
02:05 Let's see what the investigation comes up with. If we had done this I think we
02:12 would want the benefit of having the opportunity to investigate it and to
02:16 figure out what happened. But it's not the same thing we're giving them billions of
02:19 dollars in weapons. We're giving them the kinds of capabilities they need to
02:23 defend themselves. Maybe some people have forgotten what happened on the 7th of
02:27 October but we haven't.