Biden Urged Netanyahu to Protect Civilians in Rafah: White House

WILMINGTON—U.S. President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that Israel should not proceed with a military operation in Rafah without a plan to ensure the safety of the roughly 1 million people sheltering there, the White House said.

President Biden reaffirmed the shared goal of seeing Hamas terrorists defeated and ensuring the long-term security of Israel, but also called for “urgent and specific steps” to increase the throughput and consistency of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza, the White House said in a statement.

Aid agencies say an assault on Rafah, located in the southern part of Gaza on the border with Egypt, would be catastrophic. Israel’s military ordered civilians to flee south before previous assaults on Gaza’s cities, but now there is no obvious place to go and aid agencies have said many people could die.

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