Israel should ignore Biden and finish the job in Rafah 

The last stand of Hamas could lie in the Gazan city of Rafah, where the terror group’s last four battalios remain. The only force stopping Israel from completing Hamas’s destruction is President Biden. Israel faces a dilemma: will it heed Joe Biden’s concerns about the military operation, or do the right thing and eliminate its nemesis? 

Biden is pulling out all the stops, going so far as to threaten Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying in recent a televised interview that an invasion of Rafah would be crossing a “red line.” Biden has not used this significant phrase with Iran, North Korea, China, or even Russia – only Israel has been given such a strong ultimatum. 

Israel cannot defeat Hamas without going into Rafah. There is no permanent solution to the crisis until Hamas is defeated militarily on the battlefield. Even the Biden administration’s latest threat assessment warned that Hamas’s surviving underground infrastructure would allow “insurgents to hide, regain strength and surprise Israeli forces.” Israel has not yet been able to dismantle Rafah’s tunnel system, which the IDF says is where many hostages are being kept. 

U.S. officials have warned the consequences to Israel of going into Gaza could include abandoning Israel’s defense at the United Nations against a ceasefire resolution. Other possible consequences include the restriction of U.S.-made offensive weapons in Gaza, which would lead to the death of even more Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians as it inevitably prolongs the war or even prevents Hamas’s defeat. 

Hamas’s plans in the event of their survival are quite clear: their senior political leader, Ghazi Hamad, pledged that the Oct. 7 attacks were “just the first time, and there will be a second, third, and fourth. Will we pay a price? Yes, and we are ready. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” 

Yet Biden is now demanding Israel halt its offensive at the finish line. Paired with the White House’s growing push toward the fairytale of a “permanent ceasefire,” it is becoming increasingly clear Biden prefers a ceasefire to the defeat of the terrorist organization. If Israel heeds his demands, they lose this war. 

Hamas’s game plan was clear from Day 1: place Palestinian women and children next to Hamas’s weapons depots and terror tunnels, weaponize their deaths through the willing accomplice of international media outlets, then leverage that coverage for their twin objectives: military survival and the political isolation of Israel. Biden is furthering both these outcomes. 

During World War II, Roosevelt and Churchill disagreed about a wide range of strategic questions, sometimes strongly. But neither the public nor the Nazis and Japanese had much of a clue about these family fights — and that’s how it should remain today. Rather than constantly critiquing Israel in the press and from the pulpit, the Biden administration should discuss tactical disagreements in private. 

Israel has committed to going into Rafah, and the United States should work to ensure the operation is a success. Biden claims his objections to the Rafah operation are humanitarian in nature. If that’s the case, we should be pressuring Egypt to open humanitarian corridors and temporary camps in the Sinai Peninsula, where Gazan civilians can relocate while military operations remain ongoing. 

It’s not surprising that Egypt is resistant to this idea: like every other nation on the globe, they want the Gazan refugee problem to be anyone’s but their own. Plus, they worry about the prospect of further infiltration from the Muslim Brotherhood into Egypt, whose influence is endemic in Hamas. 

Yet, the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Egypt. We rarely call in favors from Egypt and Biden hasn’t put used leverage against Cairo on this point. Now is a good time. 

Instead of advancing productive plans to defeat Hamas, an insidious attempt is afoot from the White House and some Democrat leaders to claim Netanyahu’s plans for Rafah are at odds with the rest of Israel; this is an affront to a sovereign democracy that deserves deference to its duly elected leader. The claim is also at odds with reality: a recent poll of Israelis found that two-thirds of the nation supports the operation in Rafah, including 45 percent of left-leaning Israeli voters. 

In 2011, then-Vice President Biden warned President Obama against going into Pakistan to take out Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks. Thankfully, Obama ignored Biden’s worries and eliminated the world’s most notorious terrorist. Today, Israel should take a page out of Obama’s playbook: ignore Joe Biden and kill the terrorists in Rafah before they attack again. 

Morgan D. Ortagus was the spokesperson at the U.S. Department of State from 2019-2021. She is founder of Polaris National Security, and the host of “The Morgan Ortagus Show” on Sirius XM. Gabriel Noronha is executive director of Polaris National Security and served as the special adviser for Iran at the State Department from 2019-2021.