(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday that Israel “should not proceed” with a military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, without a plan for the more than 1 million civilians currently sheltering in the area.

Speaking alongside the visiting Jordanian King Abdullah II at the White House, Biden added that there have been “too many” Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza. He appeared to cite statistics from the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, despite having criticized those numbers in the past.

“For the past four months, as the war has raged,...