The Israeli government is declining to confirm or deny that the Biden administration is withholding weapons from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as reported in numerous American and Israeli news outlets this week.
Israeli government spokesman Avy Hyman said that he had seen “reports coming out from unnamed sources on the American side,” but said: “I do not have anything to add on these reports.”
Hyman also said that Israel’s efforts to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza continued, regardless of the Israeli offensive in Rafah. “Despite their best efforts, both Kerem Shalom, and the Erez Crossing, which was destroyed by Hamas on October 7, are open,” Hyman said, noting that these were just two of the nine entry points for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
He added that Israel continued to receive reports of aid “sitting” on the Gaza side of the border, undistributed.
Hyman noted that Israeli military was active in “specific areas” of eastern Rafah. He said that Israeli control of the Rafah crossing, which the IDF took on Monday, would not prevent humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip, but would instead stop Hamas from smuggling weapons into the territory.
Commenting on Israeli control of the Rafah crossing and the Philadelphi route along Gaza’s border with Egypt, Hyman agreed that military advances increased Israeli leverage in hostage talks, which have resumed in Cairo, Egypt, after Hamas claimed it would accept a ceasefire.
“We will continue to keep up the military pressure on Hamas,” he said, adding that “[w]e needed both the military pressure and the diplomatic channel” to achieve November’s hostage deal.
“We can see that they feel” military pressure, Hyman said, adding that Israel hoped and prayed for progress on a deal “within a framework that is acceptable to Israel. Obviously there can be no talk of ending the war and keeping Hamas in power.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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