State Department says decision to pause weapons shipment to Israel if it engages in major Rafah operation doesn't affect ceasefire talks

At the State Department briefing on Thursday, spokesperson Matt Miller said President Biden’s decision to pause the shipment of offensive weapons to Israel if the country mounted a large-scale military operation in Gaza would not affect talks aimed at a ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas. Miller said, “A Rafah operation would weaken Israel’s position” in the negotiations.

Video Transcript

Um Can you tell us where we are on the hostage talks?

And there are Israeli officials, I believe perhaps Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is saying a deal on the hostage talks collapsed because of um President's decision.

And because President signaled this decision, what would you say?

So, first of all, uh I'm not gonna respond to uh to uh anonymous officials.

Is that on the, on the record, quote from someone, I'm not gonna respond to anonymous officials.

But I would just say that is not at all our assessment of uh the hostage talks.

Um We actually think that a Rafa operation would weaken Israel's position both in these talks and writ large.

Uh we've talked about this before that a major military operation in Rafah would further weaken Israel's standing in the world.

Uh would further create distance from its partners in the region who actually share Israel's goal of seeing Hamas defeated and want to see Hamas replaced with um uh a different governance structure in Gaza.

And then also if you look, just look at hamas' track record, they have never cared about Palestinian civilian lives.

If they did, they wouldn't have launched these attacks in the first place which they knew would produce a response.

They wouldn't hide behind civilians and they would have agreed to a cease fire long ago.

So I just don't think that, that um that the, that argument holds any water um with respect to the talks itself.

So we continue to engage with the Israeli government on the amendments to the proposal that Hamas submitted earlier this week.

Um There continues to be, we continue to work to try to finalize the text, try to get an agreement and I will just say that any effort like this uh is incredibly difficult.

This one has certainly been incredibly difficult, but we will continue to stay engaged to try to get a deal because we believe it's in the interests of all relevant parties.