Israeli War Cabinet Approves Plans for Rafah Operation

Photo Credit: Haim Zach (GPO)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with members of the War Cabinet, including Benny Gantz (on the right), October 18, 2023.

The War Cabinet led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved IDF plans for evacuation of civilians and a military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, along the Egyptian border.

No specific details were released, for obvious reasons.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu approved the plans for action in Rafah. The IDF was prepared for the operational side and for the evacuation of the population,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a brief statement.

The United States has said it will not support the move, inasmuch as the plan has not been discussed with the Biden Administration.

Speaking on Friday at a joint presser in Vienna with Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the US is not ready to support Israel’s plan to operate in Rafah.

“The US needs to see a clear and implementable plan for action in Rafah. The US has not yet seen such a plan. We cannot support an operation that does not include a civilian protection and evacuation plan,” Blinken told reporters.

“President Biden has been very clear that given the large number of civilians in Rafah – about 1.4 million, many of whom, as the foreign minister said, have been displaced from other parts of Gaza – we have to see a clear and implementable plan not only to get civilians out of harm’s way, but also to make sure that, once out of harm’s way, they are appropriately cared for with shelter, with food, with medicine, with clothing, and we have not yet seen such a plan.

Austria’s foreign minister said pretty much the same thing. “Our Israeli friends told us that if an offensive on Rafah were to start, they would supply us with a credible plan on how to deal with the 1-point-plus million refugees, you might say – internally displaced Palestinians – who are now amassed in south of Gaza Strip. And I believe this is necessary.”

But Schallenberg added that the situation faced by Israel is complex.

“Israel has – it is in a dilemma<” he noted. “As a ‘rule of law’ state fighting terrorists, it’s a very unequal sort of fight, an unequal fight,” he noted. “On the one side you have a terrorist organization, Hamas, not abiding, not respecting any rule, less even humanitarian law. But Israel has to measure itself by international law. And the decision or the plan, as far as I understand, is – doesn’t mean yet that it will be executed immediately; it is simply that the prime minister was presented with a plan and that he has given a green light,” Schallenberg added.