Israel says Biden threat to stop arms 'very disappointing'

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said US President Joe Biden’s threat to stop certain arms supplies to Israel if it invades the crowded Gaza city of Rafah was “very disappointing”.

“This is a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war,” Gilad Erdan told Israeli public broadcaster Kan radio, in Israel’s first reaction to Biden’s warning.

Israel shelled Rafah on Thursday as US President Joe Biden offered his starkest warning yet over the conduct of its war against Hamas, vowing to cut off arms transfers if an offensive into the southern Gaza city goes ahead.

Israel has defied international objections by sending in tanks and conducting raids in the border city, which it claims is home to Hamas’s last remaining battalions — but is also crowded with displaced Palestinian civilians.

AFP journalists reported heavy shelling in Rafah early Thursday, and the Israeli military later said it was also striking “Hamas positions” further north in the centre of the Gaza Strip.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop US weapons supplies to Israel if it pushed ahead with its long-threatened Rafah ground offensive.

“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used… to deal with the cities,” Biden said. “We’re not gonna supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used.”

On Tuesday, Israel forces seized Rafah’s border crossing into Egypt, which has served the main entry point for aid into besieged Gaza.

The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries at the time, and the secretary of defence later confirmed Washington had paused, for the time being, a shipment of heavy bombs to Israel after it failed to address concerns over its Rafah ground incursion.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” Biden said in his interview. “It’s just wrong.”

He insisted, however, that the United States was “not walking away from Israel’s security”.