President Biden renewed his warnings that Israel should not make the same mistakes of overreaction as the United States did after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
ADVERTISINGUS President Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” of the Gaza Strip, making unusually harsh comments as the United Nations neared a vote on calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas stood.
“Israel's security can rely on the United States, but at the moment it has more than the United States. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world supporting it,” Biden told donors at a fundraiser on Tuesday.
“They're starting to lose that support with the indiscriminate bombings,” Biden said.
The president said he believed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was understanding, but was not so sure about Israel's war cabinet. Israeli forces carried out brutal attacks across the Gaza Strip, crushing Palestinians in their homes as the military pressed ahead with an offensive that officials said could last weeks or months.
The president took a harsher than usual view of Israel's decisions since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack and the moves of its conservative government. Biden's top national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is traveling to Israel this week for direct consultations.
Biden specifically called out Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of a far-right Israeli party and national security minister in Netanyahu's ruling coalition, who rejects a two-state solution and calls on Israel to regain control of all of the West Bank and Gaza. Ben-Gvir sits in Israel's security cabinet but is not a member of the country's three-member war cabinet.
The president also renewed his warnings that Israel must not make the same mistakes of overreaction as the United States did after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
He told a well-known anecdote about the inscription on a photo with Netanyahu decades ago: “Bibi, I don't agree with anything you have to say.” This time, the president added to his retelling of the story: “It stays that way.”
Israel continues to fight the war despite worldwide protests
Israel pressed ahead with an offensive against Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday that it said could last weeks or months, despite global calls for a ceasefire amid the rapidly rising death toll of Palestinian civilians.
A non-binding vote at the United Nations later on Tuesday is likely to show how widespread support for a ceasefire really is and highlight the increasingly isolated position of Israel and the United States on the world stage.
More than 17,700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled territory.
About 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory, where U.N. agencies say there is no safe place to flee. With only a small proportion of humanitarian aid reaching a small part of the Gaza Strip, residents are suffering from severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods.
Israel said 97 of its soldiers died in the ground offensive after Hamas invaded southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostages.
Qatar, which has played a key mediator role, says efforts to end the war and release all hostages continue but willingness to discuss a ceasefire is waning.
Hamas at “breaking point,” says Israel
The Israeli military claimed on Tuesday that Hamas is at “its breaking point” as violent clashes leave civilians in increasingly dire humanitarian conditions.
The Palestinian militant group reported fighting in central Gaza overnight, while Wafa news agency reported 12 dead and “dozens” injured in an Israeli airstrike on Rafah.
Scores of Israeli attacks have targeted Khan Yunis, the new epicenter of the fighting, and Rafah on the Egyptian border, where tens of thousands of people are now gathering fleeing the violence.
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“Hamas has reached its breaking point, the Israeli army is retaking its last bastions,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday evening.
“The fact that people surrender… accelerates our success. That’s what we want: to move forward quickly,” said Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.
He added that Israeli forces were “intensifying” their operations in the south while consolidating their positions in the north.
“Apocalyptic situation for civilians”
The situation of the civilian population in Gaza is “apocalyptic,” warned EU top diplomat Josep Borrell on Monday.
He compared the scale of destruction in the Palestinian enclave as “more or less, even greater” than that suffered by Germany during World War II.
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According to the United Nations, more than half of Gaza's homes have been destroyed or damaged by the war. In addition, approximately 1.9 million people were displaced, representing 85% of the population.
“More and more people have not eaten for a day, two days, three days… People are lacking everything,” said UNRWA director Philippe Lazzarini.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, displaced people in Rafah “face terrible conditions in crowded places both inside and outside shelters.”
“We went from Gaza to Khan Yunis and then were taken to Rafah. That night they bombed the house and destroyed it. They said Rafah was a safe place. There is no safe place,” Oum Mohammed al-Jabri, 56, told AFP.
He lost seven of his eleven children in the war.
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Calls for more humanitarian aid
The United Nations and humanitarian organizations have called on Israel to allow more aid into the Gaza Strip given the desperate situation facing civilians.
Israeli authorities have said they want to control the entry and exit of humanitarian trucks into the area.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which entered its 67th day on Tuesday, was sparked by Hamas' bloody attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The shock attack killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and around 240 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
A ceasefire that has since expired enabled the release of 100 hostages, while 137 remained captive.
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According to Palestinian authorities, Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip killed more than 18,200 people, the vast majority of them women and children. The Israeli army reported around a hundred deaths in its ranks.
2023 saw unprecedented violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even before the recent outbreak of fighting.