US officials: Israel ready for full-scale incursion into Rafah with troop buildup

The Biden administration has assessed that Israel has amassed enough troops on the edge of the city of Rafah in Gaza to move forward with a full-scale incursion in the coming days, but senior US officials are currently unsure if it has made a final decision to carry out such a move in direct defiance of President Joe Biden, two senior administration officials told CNN.

One of the officials also warned that Israel has not come anywhere close to making adequate preparations – including building infrastructure related to food, hygiene and shelter – ahead of potentially evacuating more than one million Gazans are who currently reside in Rafah.

If Israel were to proceed with a major ground operation into Rafah, it would be going against months of warnings from the US to forego a full-scale offensive into the densely populated city. Biden himself voiced that warning in his most explicit terms yet last week, telling CNN’s Erin Burnett that the US would withhold some additional arms shipments to Israel if they were to take such a step.

“The president was clear that he would not supply certain offensive weapons for such an operation were to occur,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House Monday. “It has not yet occurred.”

As the war enters its eighth month, US officials are increasingly questioning Israel’s approach to the war, including publicly suggesting it is unlikely to achieve its stated aim of destroying Hamas and eliminating its leadership.

On Monday, Kurt Campbell, the State Department’s number two official, said there have plainly been tensions between the two countries on “what the theory of victory is.”

“Sometimes when we listen closely to Israeli leaders, they talk about mostly the idea of some sort of sweeping victory on the battlefield, total victory. I don’t think we believe that that is likely or possible,” Campbell said, in a seeming allusion to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated references to a “total victory.” “We view that there has to be more of a political solution. That’s one of the reasons why the president’s team has been so engaged with the surrounding region,” Campbell said at the NATO Youth Summit co-hosted by the Aspen Institute.

Going “headlong into Rafah” could have dire consequences, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Sunday.

“Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left, or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” Blinken said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”