Washington Post: The United States offered Israel information about the locations of Hamas leaders in exchange for backing down from the Rafah invasion

As part of US attempts to prevent Israel from launching a full-scale ground offensive on Rafah, the Washington Post revealed that the administration of US President Joe Biden will provide Israel with valuable assistance if it backs down from the invasion of Rafah.

The assistance will include providing sensitive intelligence to help the IDF locate Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

US officials have also offered to help provide thousands of shelters so Israel can build tent cities, as well as help build food, water and medicine delivery systems so Palestinians evacuated from Rafah can have a habitable place, said US officials who declined to be identified.

Biden and his top aides have made such offers over the past few weeks in hopes of persuading Israel to carry out a limited and more targeted operation in southern Gaza City, where some 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering after fleeing other parts of Gaza on Israeli orders.

Israel has vowed to enter Rafah with excessive force and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week took a number of steps that have raised fears in the White House that the long-promised invasion could be carried out.

Administration officials, including experts from the US Agency for International Development, told Israel it would take several months to safely transport hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now living in dilapidated and unsanitary conditions in Rafah; Israeli officials disagree with this assessment.

Biden’s aides stress to their Israeli counterparts that Palestinians cannot simply be moved to arid or bombed parts of Gaza, but Israel must provide basic infrastructure, including shelter, food, water, medicine and other necessities, so that those evacuated can get help for better living conditions and simply not be exposed to further starvation or disease.

Experts from various sectors of the US government advise their Israeli counterparts in great detail on how to develop and implement such a humanitarian plan, up to the number of tents and the amount of water needed for specific areas, several sources familiar with the matter told the Washington Post.

Aid groups said evacuating people safely from Rafah was almost impossible given conditions in the rest of Gaza.

The unusually detailed and sensitive talks highlight the enormous risks facing both Israel and the United States as Netanyahu prepares to invade Rafah, the last city in Gaza not destroyed by Israeli attacks.

Israel has become increasingly isolated during the seven-month Gaza war, which has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, and Biden has come under immense criticism at home and abroad for his support.

Israeli leaders insist they must overrun Rafah to finish the mission to eliminate Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and killed some 1,200 people.

But the destruction of the city’s vast tunnel network, where many Hamas leaders and militants are based, would put tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians at risk.

That prompted US officials to urge a large-scale and overly complex evacuation plan as the best option, even as they urgently pushed for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

A senior administration official told the Washington Post, “We’ve serious concerns about the way Israel has pursued this campaign, and all of this could culminate in Rafah”.

US officials are now working closely with Egypt to find and cut tunnels crossing the Egypt-Gaza border in the Rafah area, which Hamas has used to replenish its military resources, according to two people familiar with the discussions for the Washington Post.

According to the Washington Post, the US offers came during negotiations over the past seven weeks between senior US and Israeli officials over the size and scope of the operation in Rafah, she noted that it wasn’t yet clear whether Israel would heed repeated US warnings not to launch a large-scale ground invasion.

US President Joe Biden froze a shipment of advanced bombs to Israel, and threatened the Netanyahu government to freeze future shipments if Rafah was invaded, but Israeli threats to proceed with the operation didn’t stop.