'Not supplying the weapons' to Israel if there's a major Gaza offensive, Biden says

President Joe Biden acknowledged on Wednesday the role American bombs had played in civilian deaths since Israel’s war in Gaza began seven months ago - and for the first time said he was prepared to put conditions on American weapons if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes ahead with a major invasion of Rafah.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive interview on “Erin Burnett OutFront,” referring to 2,000-pound bombs that Biden paused shipments of last week.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said. “It's just wrong. We're not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used (there)."

The Biden administration has paused the shipment of bombs to Israel over concerns they could be used in a major military operation in Rafah, where more than 1 million refugees have been sheltering, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed at a Senate hearing earlier on Wednesday.

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The administration began a review of some weapons transfers to Israel last month, a senior U.S. official said. The president then paused a shipment of 1,800 2,000-lb bombs and 1,700 500-lb bombs last week, as Israel ramped up plans for a ground invasion of the southern Gaza city. Hamas fighters and Israeli troops battled on Wednesday on the outskirts of Rafah.

On Oct. 7, Hamas killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took about 250 more as hostages. In the seven months since, Israel's retaliatory attacks have killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

The war has also unleashed a humanitarian crisis. About 1.1 million people in Gaza – half of the population – have completely exhausted their food supplies and coping capacities and are struggling with catastrophic hunger and starvation, according to the U.N’ s World Food Program.

"I worked pretty hard to make sure we have a relationship and help, I made it clear to Bibi and the work cabinet, we're not gonna get our support if in fact they're going to these population centers," he said.

In a letter to Biden last Friday, House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., and House Foreign Affairs Committee member Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., wrote that the "security assistance included in the recently passed security supplemental should not be interpreted as a blank check or as implicit approval of the Netanyahu government’s actions." The letter was signed by an additional 86 Democratic members of Congress.

The review, meanwhile, prompted a wave of complaints from Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, offered an immediate rebuke following Biden's interview.

"We stand by allies, we don’t second guess them. Biden’s dithering on Israel weapons is bad policy and a terrible message to Israel, our allies, and the world," he wrote on X.

Meanwhile, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was one of 88 members of Congress who signed the letter to Biden Friday expressing "alarm at the deepening humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip" called his decision a "just thing to do."

"President Biden enforcing conditions on US military aid and holding the Israeli gov to the same bar we hold all our allies to is the responsible, secure, and just thing to do," she wrote on X. "@POTUS’s historic shift to include Israel in US standards makes the world safer and our values clear."

In recent weeks, protests over Israel’s war on Gaza have engulfed college campuses with "Gaza Solidarity Encampments" springing up coast-to-coast demanding an immediate cease-fire.

A Gallup survey released March 27, showed 55% of all Americans disapprove of Israel’s military action. That includes 75% of Democrats, which is up from the 63% who said the same last November.

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @SwapnaVenugopal

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Not supplying the weapons' to Israel if Rafa offensive continues: Biden