The White House on Thursday sought to emphasize that the U.S. will continue to provide Israel with what it needs to defend itself in its war against Hamas, including using the money recently approved by Congress as part of a larger foreign aid package, while cautioning that the supply of other categories of weapons will depend on Israel’s actions in Rafah.
"[President Joe Biden] is going to continue to provide Israel with the capabilities that it needs – all of them,” White House National Security Communication Advisor John Kirby told reporters on a call on Thursday. “But he does not want certain categories of American weapons used in a particular type of operation in a particular place.”
Future shipments of such weapons, Kirby said, will depend on what Israel decides to do in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than one million civilians are taking refuge.
“Israel has to make its decisions, we understand that, and we'll have to make ours based on what they do,” Kirby said.
Kirby's comments comes one day after two major developments that many perceived to be an escalation of the growing daylight between the U.S. and Israel regarding the more than seven month-old war in Gaza: President Joe Biden telling CNN that he would not supply Israel with offensive weapons that could be used to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirming that the U.S. already paused a shipment of bombs due to concerns over just that.
Biden’s comment and news of the halted shipment received swift rebuke from former President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans, some of whom just last month voted in favor of a major priority of Biden’s that had been stalled in the lower chamber for months: billions of dollars in new aid to Israel, Ukraine and allies in the Indo-Pacific.
“Everybody keeps talking about pausing weapons shipments – weapons shipments are still going to Israel,” Kirby said on Thursday. “They're still getting the vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves.”
“We've also committed to and will continue to spending every dime of the supplemental request that we got from Congress to get them the capabilities they need,” he added.
Kirby also took issue with criticisms that the president was abandoning Israel.
“The arguments that somehow we're walking away from Israel fly in the face of the facts,” he said, noting, among other things, that Biden visited Israel shortly after Hamas’ attack and “put American fighter pilots in the sky” to help shoot down missiles and drones fired by Iran at Israel last month.
This week, Israel appeared to move toward a long-promised ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million civilians are sheltering — a move the Biden administration opposes without a plan to protect civilians.
“An enduring defeat on Hamas certainly remains the Israeli goal and we share that goal with them,” Kirby said on Thursday. “Smashing into Rafah, in his view, will not advance that objective, will not get to that sustainable and enduring defeat of Hamas.”
Israel has already carried out certain strikes and captured the Rafah crossing, but Kirby emphasized the president does not believe Israel has crossed into a full-scale invasion and was talking about such a potential future operation when he told CNN he may halt certain weapons.
Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Monday in a call in which the U.S. president “reiterated his clear position” on Rafah, according to the White House.
Kirby on Thursday declined to say whether the president spoke to Netanyahu about the pause in the bombs shipment during their call but noted that Israel has understood “for some time now” Biden’s intent not to supply certain weapons that could be used in an invasion of Rafah.
Biden has faced pressure internationally and from some at home over his continued support of Israel as the Palestinian death toll has risen and the humanitarian crisis worsened amid Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza.
In recent weeks, college campuses around the country have erupted with students protesting Israel and Biden’s handling of the war, leading to more than 2,300 arrests. And some Democrats in Congress have called on the Biden administration to put conditions on future military aid to Israel.