Another diplomatic row is brewing between Israel and the U.S. over Israel Defense Forces (IDF) plans to push into the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, which after four months of devastating warfare has become the “last refuge” for 1.5 million displaced Palestinians. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this weekend that Israel’s campaign in Gaza has put victory “in reach,” though the leader’s stated goal of “eradicating” the Hamas militant group still appears some way off.  

As IDF units fight in the southern Hamas stronghold of Khan Younis, Israeli planners are preparing to push all the way south to Rafah, which sits along the Gaza-Egypt frontier. 

“We're going to do it,” Netanyahu said. “We're going to get the remaining Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah, which is the last bastion." 

The threat prompted protests from the White House, with President Joe Biden warning there should be no offensive on Rafah “without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there.” 

Netanyahu—never a firm friend of Biden in a relationship spanning decades—has repeatedly shown willingness to defy Israel’s prime benefactor. The battle of Rafah could prove his biggest statement yet. 

“Netanyahu and the Israeli government have demonstrated repeatedly that they will take whatever actions they believe will best serve Israel’s security, regardless of what their allies or regional partners advocate,” Professor Adria Lawrence of Johns Hopkins University told Newsweek. 

“The United States simply does not have the ability to deter the Israeli government that some of Biden’s critics believe he has.” 

 An IDF assault into Rafah may also upset the delicate diplomatic balance. Israel’s local partners—with whom Netanyahu and his colleagues have spent decades trying to repair and expand security, economic, and political ties—are making clear their discomfort. 

Any operation into Rafah—and the Philadelphi Corridor, the name used to refer to the strip of land running along the Gaza-Egypt border—could well prove costly. More than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed and 80 percent of Gaza’s population displaced by the Israeli campaign, according to figures published by the Associated Press.  

On the IDF side, 232 troops have so far been killed in fighting in the Strip. The operation was launched after Hamas’ surprise October 7 infiltration attack into southern Israel, which killed some 1,200 people and saw around 250 taken back into Gaza as hostages. Some 100 captives remain unaccounted for. Two more hostages were rescued this week in an operation in Rafah. 

David Tsur, the former commander of Israel’s Yamam counter-terrorism unit and a former member of the Israeli parliament, told Newsweek during a Jerusalem Press Club briefing on Monday that any action in Rafah will be “complex” given it is “a very hostile” urban area.

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