ANALYSIS — If President Joe Biden truly has a “red line” for the conflict in Gaza, Israeli officials likely have not come close to crossing it.
The Biden administration’s metric for what would amount to the crossing of such a line — and potentially lead Biden to switch off the spigot of American military aid to Tel Aviv — shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet have a huge amount of leeway to continue air strikes, and even ground operations.
That tactically sizable operating space was on full display this weekend, when an Israeli airstrike killed around 40 Palestinian civilians — many of them children — and in subsequent days as Israeli Defense Forces tanks rolled into Rafah. The southern Gaza city is where Netanyahu’s government, which could soon face a vote on dissolving the country’s parliament and moving toward elections, initially instructed Palestinian civilians to flee. Now Israel contends there are Hamas operatives hiding among the refugees.
