Blinken said Israel has not presented a plan to protect civilians during its promised ground operation against the city in southern Gaza.
“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” Blinken told the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum in Arizona on Friday, Al Jazeera reported.
Despite a chorus of international concern for civilian casualties, the Israeli regime's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to send Israeli troops to attack Rafah.
Israel waged a genocidal war on the besieged Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas Resistance group carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
At least 34,596 Palestinians have been killed and 77,816 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.
Israel has imposed a complete siege on the densely populated territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
MP/PR