Rafah is Biden’s red line for Netanyahu – but there’s not much he can do to stop it being crossed
Setting red lines is all very well, as long as you follow through when they are crossed. President Joe Biden knows that all too well.
But he also knows that if he follows through on this big new red line of withholding offensive weapons for Israel it could cost him dearly domestically.
The push-me-pull-you balance of geopolitics and domestic politics is intensely difficult right now for the American president.
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I’ll break this down into two parts. The politics in a moment. First the challenges of red lines.
Western leaders throw them down in interviews, like Mr Biden’s pronouncement on CNN last night, as unequivocal threats. “Cross the line, if you dare!” is the rhetoric.
But too often they turn out to be flawed tools of geo-political diplomacy.
Barack Obama set a chemical weapons red line with Syria’s Bashar al Assad in 2012. He walked right through it.
Vladimir Putin remembered that when he walked through a red line Mr Biden had set on Ukraine in 2021. Mr Putin invaded. The rest is history.
Every red line is distinct, of course, and they vary in terms of the gravity of the event they are seeking to prevent.
But the principle behind laying them is the same, as is the message set when they are crossed.
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Joe Biden with Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Moscow in 2011. Pic: AP
Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu
Over the past six months, as Israel has sought to defeat Hamas in Gaza, President Biden didn’t think he’d need to lay out red lines. After all, Israel is one of America’s closest allies.
Instead, the Biden administration thought gentle diplomacy and frank back-channels with a “close friend of America” would do the trick.
But gradually, as Mr Biden and the Netanyahu government increasingly diverged on protecting civilians and a plan for “the day after” in Gaza, a red line began to appear – Rafah.
This has become Mr Biden’s red line for Israel.
The American president has repeatedly made clear his opposition to Mr Netanyahu’s insistence on a ground invasion of the southern Gazan city (Mr Netanyahu’s own red line) where about 1.4 million people are living, half of them under 18.
Smoke rises from Rafah after an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza city this week. Pic: AP
The Israeli military has not (yet) moved into Rafah city but is instead concentrating its operations to the east of the city and around the crossing to Egypt.
That fact has allowed the Biden administration to claim its red line hasn’t yet been crossed. “They didn’t describe it as a major ground operation,” spokesman John Kirby said this week.
Sometimes, red lines are smashed through. Sometimes, they are gradually chipped away at.
To counter the chipping Mr Netanyahu has been doing for weeks, Mr Biden hardened his red line.
“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,” he told CNN.
A significant admission
That he has personally admitted what was already a fact – that American weapons have killed thousands of civilians – is significant.
But there is important nuance in his red line.
He’s talking about stopping the delivery of offensive weapons for the type of operations that have flattened much of Gaza and could do the same to Rafah.
He is not threatening to cut Israel off from all US weapons, of course not.
Defensive weapons to counter Iranian proxy rockets will keep coming. As will long-range weapons and jets to counter Iran. None of that will stop being delivered.
Still, it’s a big shift for Biden. It’s not been done before and symbolically for Israel, in the middle of its longest and most critical war, it looks terrible.
The domestic political risks
And that brings us to the domestic politics of all this.
For every lever of influence Mr Biden pulls (and he’s seen they have their limited use) there is a domestic political calculus.
Pretty much all Republicans are against every lever; they want nothing less than unequivocal support for Israel.
More than that though – a significant number of his own Democrats will also be uneasy about America limiting weapons for Israel.
But critical voters in key states are very pro-Palestine. President Biden isn’t oblivious to their cry “Genocide Joe!”
It is a perilous political push-me-pull-you and the election is six months away.
Melania Trump has reportedly defended the right to abortion in her upcoming memoir, writing that “restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body”.
Her husband Donald Trump has come under scrutiny for his stance on abortion, having previously signalled support for a national ban beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy.
His current position is to back states to decide abortion laws and support exceptions to a ban in the case of rape, incest or danger to the mother’s life.
However, Mrs Trump, who served as first lady during her husband’s previous stint in the White House, has reportedly laid out her position in her memoir, entitled “Melania”.
According to The Guardian, which reports it has seen a copy ahead of publication next week, she writes that women should be “free from any intervention or pressure from the government”.
“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body,” she has written.
“I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
She also writes: “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?”
A spokesperson for Mrs Trump has not yet responded to a request for comment.
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Trump in April: Abortion up to US states
This election is the first since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling, which ended a nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion in the US.
Since then, nearly two dozen US states have banned or limited access to the procedure.
Mr Trump previously said he was “proudly the person responsible” for the court overturning the ruling in 2022 – which had protected a right to abortion at up to around 24 to 28 weeks – as judges he appointed while president won the vote.
He has also falsely claimed that Democrats support abortion after the baby is born.
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The rival Democrat campaign views abortion rights as an issue for candidate Kamala Harris to use against the former president.
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign said: “Sadly for the women across America, Mrs Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom, and their lives”.
US
Brits are healthier than Americans, study says – but are more likely to think their health is poor
Britons are healthier than Americans but are more likely than their stateside counterparts to think their health is poor, a new study has found.
Almost 10,000 British people, as well as more than 5,000 US adults, in their 30s and 40s took part in the study by academics from the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, University of Oxford, Syracuse University and University of North Carolina.
The research found adults in the US were more likely to have high cholesterol and high blood pressure, while 40% of Americans were obese compared to 34.5% of Britons.
But 18% of British adults reported their health as poor compared to 12% of adults in the US.
Britons were also more likely to smoke daily – 28% compared to 21% in the US cohort.
The researchers said the health of the US “acts as a warning” of what Britain could be like without the “safety net” of the NHS.
Dr Charis Bridger Staatz, of the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, said that the differences in the health of the two countries may be down to “levels of exercise, diets and poverty, and limited access to free healthcare”.
“Given political and social similarities between the US and Britain, the US acts as a warning of what the state of health could be like in Britain without the safety net of the NHS and a strong welfare system.”
Professor George Ploubidis, of the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, warned that the findings – published in the International Journal of Epidemiology – “should not distract” from levels of obesity and high blood pressure in Britain.
“In some ways, these findings could be seen to paint a positive picture for the nation, as the health of adults in Britain is better than that in the USA,” he said.
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“Nevertheless, this research should not distract us from the fact that more than a third of British adults are obese and a fifth have high blood pressure in midlife.
“The new government’s pledges to cut NHS waiting times will be severely tested if this and future generations continue to age in poor health.”
The study also found that inequalities were typically wider in the US, with larger health differences between the poorest and wealthiest ends of society.
Dr Bridger Staatz said work to tackle health inequalities in Britain will be beneficial.
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“In both Britain and the US, public health policies tend to focus on improving health awareness and behaviours in childhood or older age.
“However, intervening in midlife offers a great opportunity to promote healthier ageing.
“In the wake of Lord Darzi’s report into the state of the NHS, it is encouraging to hear the new prime minister prioritising a 10-year programme of reform for the health service.
“Long-term planning and investment in the NHS will likely help improve the health disparities we see in the UK and prevent the emergence of inequalities on the same scale as we see in the US. This will not only help to improve population health across life but create a happier and more prosperous society.”
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