Israel-Gaza updates: 300,000 have fled Rafah, UN agency says

Following threats from President Joe Biden to cut off arms to Israel if it launches a full-scale invasion of Rafah, the Israel Defense Forces say they have the armaments they need for operations in Rafah.

"The IDF has armaments for the missions it plans, and we also have what we need for the missions in Rafah. I say this in the context of everything that has come up with the United States and it is important to say it," Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the IDF, said Thursday.

"The United States has provided security assistance to the State of Israel and the IDF so far in an unprecedented way during the war, what is no less important than this is the military assistance and cooperation of the American Central Command and the IDF," Hagari said.

Israel's insistence on maintaining its ability to operate throughout Gaza against Hamas was a major sticking point in cease-fire negotiations that have fallen through, a senior Israeli official told ABC News.

The official said Israel will have to operate in Rafah, even if a deal is struck. One of the key problems Israel sees with the proposed deal is the demand for an end to the war when Hamas is still "well established" in Rafah.

-ABC News' Will Gretsky

The delegations for Hamas and Israel have left Cairo without a cease-fire deal, Israeli and Egyptian officials said.

Hamas said earlier in the week that they had agreed to a cease-fire proposal, prompting celebration from both sides, but Israel soon after said the deal was not the one it had proposed and included "significant gaps." However, Israel committed to send negotiators to Egypt anyway in hopes of coming to an agreement on a cease-fire deal that would also likely include the release of hostages held in Gaza.

It is unclear when negotiations will resume.

-ABC News' Jordana Miller and Ayat Al-Tawy

As the Israeli military steps up attacks in the southern Gaza enclave of Rafah in preparation for an apparent large-scale incursion, about 80,000 people have now fled, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the U.N. relief agency in Gaza.

"The toll on these families is unbearable. Nowhere is safe," UNRWA said in a post on social media.

About 1.5 million people were living in Rafah recently after Israel directed people in the north to flee south during its initial incursion into the Gaza Strip. The U.S. has warned Israel against a large-scale attack in Rafah unless an evacuation plan can be carried out first.