https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-israel-arms-embargo-hamas-antony-blinken-john-kirby-27ac5ce7?mod=opinion_lead_pos4
You’d think President Biden would need a good reason to cut off a U.S. ally mid-fight against anti-American terrorists. Instead his Administration has offered a series of excuses that reveal how weak his justification is for an arms embargo against Israel.
The latest, from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is that taking Rafah won’t achieve anything. “Israel is on the trajectory potentially to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy, and probably refilled by Hamas,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
This is defeatism. What remains of Hamas could attempt an insurgency, but that’s a lower risk than leaving Hamas’s four military battalions and leadership to survive in Rafah. The only way Israel can fill a “vacuum” with a day-after plan is if it reaches the day after, and creates a vacuum, by defeating Hamas in Rafah. Any plan to replace Hamas depends on victory in its last Gaza stronghold.
Last week White House spokesman John Kirby tried a different argument: Israel has achieved so much, it doesn’t need to take Rafah. “We believe that they put an enormous amount of pressure on Hamas and that there are better ways to go after what is left of Hamas in Rafah than a major ground operation,” he said. Israel has already “eliminated a lot of the leaders” and “decimated the ranks of many of their units.”