Biden says Hamas is ‘no longer capable’ of carrying out another major attack against Israel

( The Hill ) – President Joe Biden says Hamas is “no longer capable” of carrying out another large-scale attack on Israel as he urges Israelis and Hamas to come to a deal to release remaining hostages for an extended cease-fire.

Biden on Friday addressed the nearly eight-month Israel-Hamas war as the Israeli military confirmed that its forces are now operating in central parts of Rafah in its expanding offensive in the southern Gaza city. Biden calls it “a truly a decisive moment.

The Democrat adds that Hamas says it wants a cease-fire, and an Israeli-phased deal is an opportunity to prove “whether they really mean it.”

Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250. Israel says around 100 hostages are still captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of around 30 more.

Cease-fire talks ground to a halt at the beginning of the month after a major push by the U.S. and other mediators to secure a deal, in hopes of averting a planned Israeli invasion of the southern city of Rafah.

The talks were stymied by a central sticking point: Hamas demands guarantees that the war will end and Israeli troops will withdraw from Gaza completely in return for a release of all the hostages, a demand Israel rejects.

The remarks come after Israel’s military confirmed that its forces are operating in central parts of Rafah in its expanding offensive in the southern Gaza city.

During his commencement address at Morehouse College earlier this month, Biden decried the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

“What’s happening in Gaza and Israel is heartbreaking. Hamas’s vicious attack on Israel, killing innocent lives and holding people hostage … innocent Palestinians caught in the middle of all this,” Biden told the crowd of graduates at the historically Black, all-male college in Atlanta.

This is a developing story; the Associated Press contributed.

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