US President Joe Biden claimed on 8 May that his government will not support or provide weapons for an expanded Israeli assault on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. He appears to confirm reports that Washington had recently paused the delivery of 2,000 to 500-lb bombs to Israel last week over concerns about a wide-scale Israeli operation in Rafah.
When asked if US weapons have been used to kill civilians, Biden said: “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which [Israel] goes after population centers… I made it clear that if they go into Rafah… I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem.”
Biden said that Israel has “not yet” crossed the “red line” regarding conduct in Gaza but that it was close to doing so. The Biden administration has already approved over 100 US arms sales to Israel since the start of the war and has been continuously supplying ammunition to the Israeli state.
Reacting to Biden’s statements, some Palestinians rejected his “fictitious red-line”. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said that Biden is “a war criminal and his criminal administration must be tried before international courts, just like the Zionist war criminals.” The Palestinian group said that “Biden’s recent statements confirm that his administration is directly involved in the war on Gaza and in managing field operations with the entity, and that it can stop the war with the blink of an eye… The recent American criticism of the Zionist regime, and its decision to suspend sending a bomb shipment, are mere formalities that will not stop the aggression or the ongoing war of extermination against our people… Such statements are also merely anesthetizing messages to American public opinion that is angry at the American administration’s policy and its unlimited support for the entity.”
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