Biden tells Netanyahu plan needed for Rafah residents’ safety before military advance

President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that a military operation in the overcrowded city of Rafah in southern Gaza should not proceed unless a plan for “ensuring the safety” of the population was laid out first, the White House said.

Biden “reaffirmed his view that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there,” the White House said in a readout of the two leaders’ Sunday morning call.