By Chantal Da Silva us
As Israeli forces pushed deeper into Rafah just days after an airstrike sparked a major fire that killed dozens of Palestinians, the White House said that its ally had not crossed the Biden administration's "red line."
Israeli tanks were seen entering central Rafah for the first time Tuesday, as global condemnation mounted over the deaths in a crowded tent camp for displaced civilians and as U.S. aid deliveries to Gaza by sea were suspended after damage to its temporary pier.
But National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a briefing that the United States was not turning a "blind eye" to Israel’s operations in the southern Gaza city, from which around 1 million Palestinians have fled in recent weeks.
He said the Biden administration did not believe Israel's actions in Rafah so far represented a "major ground operation" that would violate President Joe Biden's warnings and trigger a change in U.S. policy including the threatened halt to weapons shipments.
"A major ground operation is, you know, 1000s and 1000s of troops moving in a maneuvered, concentrated, coordinated way against a variety of targets on the ground," he said.
A U.S. official similarly told NBC News that while the U.S. believed the deadly strike was a "horrific incident," it appeared to be the result of an airstrike gone "horribly wrong" and didn't represent Israel "smashing into Rafah."
Biden told CNN earlier this month: “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem."
Asked by NBC News' Gabe Gutierrez how Israeli tanks appearing to near central Gaza did not represent a full-scale ground operation, Kirby said Israeli officials had maintained that their tanks were moving along the Philadelphi Corridor, a key strategic strip of land running along the Egypt-Gaza border, and "not in the town proper."
"That's what the Israelis have said," Kirby responded. "We're going based on what the Israelis are telling us and what they're saying publicly and what we're able to discern, as best we can."
