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Biden calls Netanyahu’s approach to war in Gaza a mistake, deepening rift between the two allies [1]
['Tia Goldenberg', 'Associated Press', 'Wafaa Shurafa', 'Jack Jeffery']
Date: 2024-04-10 11:03:42-04:00
President Joe Biden said Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“We’ll see what he does in terms of meeting the commitments that he made to me,” Biden said at the White House.
Although the flow of trucks has increased since Biden spoke with Netanyahu last week, the U.S. president said Israel should open another access point in Gaza’s north.
After months of supporting the war against Hamas, the White House has ramped up pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire and taken a sterner line that has rattled the countries’ decades-old alliance and deepened Israel’s international isolation over the war.
The most serious disagreement has been over Israel’s plans for an offensive in Rafah. The rift was worsened by an Israeli airstrike last week on an aid convoy that killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen charity, most of them foreigners. Israel said the deaths were unintentional, but Biden was outraged.
Biden’s latest comments in an interview that was recorded two days after the World Central Kitchen strike and aired late Tuesday highlight the differences between Israel and the U.S. over humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, where the war has led to warnings of imminent famine for more than a million people.
“What he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden told Spanish-language broadcaster Univision when asked if Netanyahu was prioritizing his political survival over Israel’s interest.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza in the early days of the war, but under U.S. pressure has slowly increased the number of trucks allowed to enter the territory.
Still, aid groups say supplies are not reaching desperate people quickly enough, blaming Israeli restrictions and noting that thousands of trucks are waiting to enter Gaza. Countries have attempted less efficient ways to deliver aid, including airdrops and by sea.
Israel says its has opened up more entry points for trucks to enter and reach especially hard-hit areas like northern Gaza, an early target of Israel in the war. Israel also accuses aid groups of being too slow to deliver aid once it’s inside Gaza.
READ MORE: Israel withdraws some troops from southern Gaza, but plan to assault Hamas in Rafah remains
Aid groups say logistical issues and the precarious security situation — underscored by the strike on the aid workers — complicate deliveries.
Netanyahu has vowed to achieve “total victory,” pledging to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 attacks and to return hostages captured by Hamas and others that day. He says that victory must include an offensive in Rafah.
Six months into the war, Israel is growing ever more isolated, with even its closest partner increasingly vocal about its discontent with the war’s direction and longtime trading partners like Turkey taking potentially painful economic steps to express dismay.
Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, is under pressure to decide on a postwar vision for Gaza. But critics say he is delaying because he doesn’t want to anger his ultranationalist governing partners, who support resettling the Gaza Strip, which Israel withdrew from in 2005. Netanyahu has ruled out the idea.
His governing partners also oppose making significant concessions to Hamas and have threatened to exit the government — a step that would cause the ruling coalition to collapse and trigger new elections.
WATCH: Israeli forces withdraw from southern Gaza as cease-fire talks resume
Israel launched the war in response to Hamas’ cross-border assault in which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 33,400 Palestinians have been killed in the relentless fighting, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel says it has killed some 12,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has ignited a humanitarian catastrophe. Most of the territory’s population has been displaced and with vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape leveled in the fighting, many areas are uninhabitable.
Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah and Jeffery reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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[1] Url:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-calls-netanyahus-approach-to-war-in-gaza-a-mistake-deepening-rift-between-the-two-allies
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