Netanyahu Doubles Down on Plans to Fight in Rafah

TEL AVIV—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said expanding his military campaign in Gaza to the southern city of Rafah is necessary to defeat Hamas, threatening to widen a rift with the Biden administration, which has increased warnings about the potential cost in civilian lives and suffering of such a move.

Netanyahu, in an interview with ABC News on Sunday, said that not entering Rafah—to where more than one million Palestinians have fled—would be akin to losing the war and allowing Hamas to survive.

“You have to dismantle Hamas as a [military] force that controls territory,” he said. “We’re well and within reach, and we shouldn’t stop.”

Netanyahu made similar comments to Fox News, where he defended the scale of Israel’s military response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, an event that he compared to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.