Leaks from today’s meeting with the Israeli leadership indicated that Tony is furious that the IDF is heading south to Rafah

Oh, poor Tony Blinken. The hapless Secretary of State didn’t think that Israeli would take seriously the US position that Hamas must be defeated. Leaked reports from inside today’s meeting suggest that he lost his cool when the Israeli leadership informed him that Rafah was the next and possibly ultimate target as Khan Yunis is about to fall to the IDF.

His boss, meanwhile, apparently forgot who Israeli was fighting, unable to remember the word “Hamas” and settling for “the opposition” as if Hamas was an opposing parliamentary faction.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant made it crystal clear that the IDF was setting its sights on Gaza’s southernmost city, on the Egyptian border, as an essential step in ensuring that the Hamas leadership, down to 6 batallions out of an original 24, has nowhere left to run. Apparently the Secretary, who was rebuffed in his demand for a four-eyes meeting with Israel’s Chief of Staff, thinks that he calls the shots for the State of Israel.

Netanyahu and Blinken will hold separate pressers Wednesday evening, a good indication that the two are not exacting seeing eye to eye.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is also not pleased that Israel is aiming to win the war. He warns that if Israel pushes its Gaza ground operation into the southern city of Rafah, it would have “untold regional consequences.”

“I am especially alarmed by reports that the Israeli military intends to focus next on Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been squeezed in a desperate search for safety,” Guterres said. “Such an action would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”