Joe Biden on Saturday assured Israel of the United States’ “unwavering support” in the face of what he called “horrific Hamas terrorist attacks,” beginning with military assistance.
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Following a surprise offensive from the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian Islamist movement, high-level contacts between American and Israeli officials increased, and both sides in particular held an “in-depth discussion” about the Jewish state’s need for military assistance. said a senior White House official.
He explained that an announcement on the American side was possible as early as Sunday, but acknowledged that the executive branch faces a complicated institutional situation, with one of the chambers of Congress paralyzed following the dismissal of its Republican leader.
“Congress likely has a role to play here, and without the Speaker of the House, this is an unprecedented situation that needs to be addressed,” this source said.
The American president, who had previously spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke of a “human tragedy” in a short and solemn speech at the White House.
The outbreak of violence on Saturday left “more than 200 dead” and “more than 1,000 injured” on the Israeli side, according to the army, which accused Hamas of “massacring civilians”, and 232 dead on the Palestinian side, according to the Islamist movement’s health ministry, which has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007.
American diplomacy chief Antony Blinken spoke with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukri in the hope that Cairo, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, will help end their offensive, according to the State Department.
The outbreak of this war is a headache for the Biden administration for several reasons.
First, it undermines the American president’s major project in the region, namely to achieve normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of the United States’ oldest allies in the Middle East, which share the same concerns about the development of Iran’s nuclear program.
The senior American official quoted earlier considered it “premature” to draw conclusions on the matter.
In addition, the Hamas offensive gave Joe Biden’s Republican opponents an opportunity to rekindle their criticism of what they consider to be too lenient policies toward Iran, which officially welcomed the operation on Saturday.
Some right-wing officials in particular once again expressed sharp criticism of a recent prisoner exchange between the United States and Iran that resulted in the transfer of $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds to Doha.
A Republican senator, Rick Scott, estimated that Joe Biden “financed” the Hamas attack by authorizing this transfer.
A White House spokesman called the claim a “blatant lie” and said that “not a penny” of the $6 billion had been spent, emphasizing that the money should not be spent anyway and should only be used for humanitarian expenses.
“Now is not the time for an anti-Israel actor to exploit these attacks to their own advantage. “The whole world is watching,” Joe Biden warned on Saturday, possibly referring to Iran and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah.
“It is too early to say” whether Iran is “directly” involved in this spectacular Hamas offensive, and the United States currently has “no indications” in that direction, the top White House official said during an exchange with the press.
However, this official, who did not want to be named, added that there is “no doubt” that Hamas is “financed, equipped and armed” by the Tehran regime, among others.