1 week Ago By Riddhima Kanetkar
Israelis are ready to fight with their "fingernails," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday in a thinly veiled rebuff to US President Joe Biden's warning that arms supplies could be withheld over a planned operation in Gaza. Israel's long-threatened move against Rafah, where it says thousands of Hamas fighters and potentially dozens of the hostages they seized in an October 7 attack are ensconced among more than a million war-displaced Palestinians, began this week with the evacuation of some civilians followed by limited incursions. The Biden administration has said it cannot support a major Rafah invasion in the absence of what it would deem a credible plan to safeguard non-combatants.
Israel has said victory in the seven-month-old conflict is impossible without taking Rafah. The Netanyahu government had kept silent over reports that Washington was holding back a shipment of aerial bombs - until, on Wednesday, Biden went public with the measure, saying it was part of a US warning to the Israelis not to "go into Rafah". "If we must stand alone, we shall stand alone," Netanyahu said without referring specifically to the US announcement.
"If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails," he said in a video statement. "But we have much more than our fingernails, and with that strength of spirit, with God's help, together we shall be victorious." The conservative prime minister's comments were echoed by the other two voting members of his war cabinet, Defence Minist.
