After meeting with US President Joe Biden, Jordan’s King Abdullah II has called for a full and “lasting ceasefire” to end the current war in the besieged Gaza Strip, as Israel is preparing to launch a ground offensive into the crowded southern city of Rafah.
King Abdullah’s appeal came after he met with Biden at the White House on Monday as both leaders warned against any indiscriminate Israeli ground assault into Rafah, where more than a million desperate Palestinians are trapped.
“We cannot afford an Israeli attack on Rafah. It is certain to produce another humanitarian catastrophe,” said the Jordanian monarch, taking the lectern after Biden had spoken first,” the Jordanian leader said, stressing, “We cannot stand by and let this continue. We need a lasting ceasefire now — this war must end.”
King Abdullah, whose country is home to more than 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, has constantly pushed for a permanent ceasefire to end the Israeli war in the densely populated Gaza Strip.
Jordan has housed the largest proportion of Palestinian exiles largely live on Israel’s eastern border. One in five people in the Arab country is Palestinian and most of them have full Jordanian citizenship.
Israel launched the US-backed war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance group Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed more than 28,000 individuals, the majority of whom are innocent civilians, and injured more than 68,000 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
The Israeli regime stresses that it wants to eradicate Hamas in the Gaza Strip and now it focuses on Rafah, claiming that the resistance group will be eliminated through a ground invasion of the southern city.
Rafah has come to host more than 1.4 million Palestinians, who have fled there from the ravages of the Israeli military onslaught in other parts of Gaza.
Aid organizations say Rafah’s evacuation will be nearly impossible, given the scale of devastation elsewhere in Gaza and the huge number of people who have been trapped in the besieged area.
So far, Washington has refused to call for a permanent ceasefire in the Palestinian territory as it fully supports Israel’s drive to defeat Hamas, calling only for shorter pauses with hostage deals instead.
However, now that Biden seeks reelection in November he began taking a harder line with the occupying regime on civilian casualties, Claiming last week that Tel Aviv’s offensive was “over the top.”
“The United States is working on a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, which would bring in mediate and sustained period of calm to Gaza for at least six weeks,” the American president said, adding that key elements were in place but “gaps” remained.
More than four months into the regime’s onslaught on Gaza, the military forces have now ramped up airstrikes on the border town of Rafah.
