Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a showdown in the next several days with President Joe Biden over a potential military operation in Rafah, which Israel says is necessary to ensure the defeat of Hamas.
Earlier this week, Biden and Netanyahu spoke about the prospect of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invasion of Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The White House said that President Biden firmly opposed an invasion of Rafah, and that the U.S. believed Israel could defeat Hamas without a large-scale operation. He invited Israel to send officials to Washington for talks next week.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, described the conversation differently. He said that he had stressed the need to enter Rafah to destroy Hamas’s last four battalions, and told the Israeli public that he had only agreed to negotiate about humanitarian operations there.
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