Netanyahu says he won’t bow to pressure to call off Rafah invasion

Jerusalem: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel insisted on Saturday that Israel would not bow to international pressure to call off its plan for a ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip that is now packed with more than 1 million Palestinians.

Many of the people now in Rafah are displaced and living in schools, tents or the homes of friends and relatives, part of a desperate search for any safe refuge from Israel’s military campaign, which has dragged on for more than four months. Their lives are a daily struggle to find enough food and water to survive.

“Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are basically telling us: Lose the war,” Netanyahu said at a news conference in Jerusalem on Saturday evening. “It’s true that there’s a lot of opposition abroad, but this is exactly the moment that we need to say that we won’t be doing a half or a third of the job.”

About the same time as Netanyahu addressed the news conference, thousands of anti-government protesters filled a central thoroughfare in Tel Aviv — the largest protest against the prime minister in months. They filled the same street where mass protests against Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the country’s judiciary riled the nation before the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

“The people need to rise up, and the government needs to go,” said one protester, Yuval Lerner, 57. Lerner said that even before the war, he lost confidence that the government has the nation’s best interest at heart, but “Oct 7 proved it,” he said.

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, reiterated Saturday his appeal to Israel to refrain from launching a military operation in Rafah “that would worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian situation.”

The Israeli leader played down the chances of a quick breakthrough in indirect talks with Hamas on a cease-fire in exchange for a hostage release. He said that Hamas — the armed group that long controlled Gaza and which led the Oct 7 attack on Israel that started the war — was making “ludicrous” demands in those negotiations.

President Joe Biden said at a news conference Friday that he didn’t expect Israel to invade Rafah while efforts to free the hostages were ongoing.