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- Biden says the commentary on the cause of the explosion is based on data from the US Department of Defense
- Biden hugs survivors of Hamas shooting
GAZA/TEL AVIV, Oct 18 (Portal) – U.S. President Joe Biden pledged solidarity with Israel on Wednesday in what was to be the only stop of a Middle East mission that would otherwise have been derailed by a massive explosion at a Gaza hospital, which According to Biden, the case was apparently caused by Israel’s enemies.
Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli airstrike for the fireball that hit Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital on Tuesday evening, which they said killed 471 people.
Israel said the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launch by the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but it denied blame.
Arab leaders responded to the loss of life they blamed on Israel by canceling a summit with Biden in Jordan. This was intended as the second half of his carefully choreographed itinerary for emergency meetings with allies to avert a major war in the region.
In a speech alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: “I was deeply saddened and outraged by yesterday’s hospital explosion in Gaza, and based on what I saw, it looks like it was the other way around.” Been a team, not “you.”
“But there are a lot of people out there who aren’t sure, so we have a lot to do, we have a lot of things to overcome,” Biden added.
Biden later said his comment was based on information provided to him by the U.S. Department of Defense, without elaborating.
Biden’s trip to the Middle East was intended to calm the region even as he demonstrated U.S. support for its ally Israel, which has vowed to destroy the Hamas movement, whose militants killed 1,400 Israelis in a rampage on Oct. 7.
But after the hospital explosion, Jordan canceled the planned summit in Amman where Biden was scheduled to meet the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Instead, he was expected to speak by telephone with Jordanian and Egyptian leaders on the way home from Air Force One.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s office said he told Biden: “God bless you for protecting the nation of Israel.”
Netanyahu thanked Biden for his “unequivocal support.”
After his talks with Netanyahu’s war cabinet, Biden held an emotional meeting with Israeli survivors of the Oct. 7 shooting. He hugged retired grandmother Rachel Edri, who was held hostage by Hamas at gunpoint in her home for 20 hours, and used food and conversation to hold her off until her capture.
“Please continue to support us in eliminating Hamas once and for all,” one soldier told Biden.
“HELP US, HELP US!”
Reports of the destruction at the hospital were horrific even by the standards of the last 12 days, which have confronted the world with unrelenting images, first of Israelis killed in their homes and then of Palestinian families buried under the rubble of Israeli retaliation.
Rescue workers searched blood-stained rubble for survivors. A Gaza civil defense chief put the death toll at 300, while the Health Ministry put it at 471, although Israel disputed those figures. Palestinian ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said rescuers were still recovering bodies.
[1/12]People react in the area of Al-Ahli hospital, where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in an explosion that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other, in Gaza City, October 18. Portal/Mohammed Al-Masri ACKNOWLEDGES LICENSE
“People ran into the surgical ward shouting, ‘Help us, help us, people are being killed and injured in the hospital!'” said Dr. Fadel Naim, head of the hospital’s orthopedic surgery department.
“The hospital was full of dead and wounded, dismembered bodies,” he told Portal. “We tried to save everyone we could, but the number was too large for the hospital team…”
Israel later released drone footage of the site of the explosion, which it said showed it was not responsible as there was no impact crater from a missile or bomb and no structural damage to surrounding buildings.
The Israeli military reportedly released an audio recording of a “communication between terrorists discussing missile misfires.”
Palestinians were convinced the explosion was an Israeli attack, without warning civilians to leave a hospital that was serving as a refuge for Gaza residents already made homeless by bombings.
“This place has created a safe haven for women and children who escaped Israeli bombing,” another doctor at the hospital, Ibrahim Al-Naqa, told Portal. “We don’t know the name of the grenade, but we saw the results when it targeted children and ripped their bodies to pieces.”
A third doctor, British-Palestinian Ghassan Abusittah, said the hospital had been shaking all day because of the bombing. He heard the sound of a rocket about to explode and then the ceiling of the operating room collapsed. In the yard he said he could see corpses and limbs everywhere. Abusittah said he then treated a man whose legs were blown off.
“COOL HEADS”
Leaders from around the world, from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Russian President Vladimir Putin, condemned the explosion in statements that did not identify those responsible.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said too many people had “jumped to conclusions” about the cause of the explosion.
“If you do this wrong, we endanger even more lives. Wait for the facts, report them clearly and accurately. Cool heads must prevail,” he posted on X.
The explosion sparked anger across the Middle East.
Palestinian security forces fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse anti-government protesters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, home of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, one of the Arab leaders who canceled a meeting with Biden.
Tensions have also been high on Israel’s border with Lebanon, where clashes between the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and Israel last week were the deadliest since the last all-out war in 2006.
Biden has been under intense pressure to secure a clear Israeli commitment to allow aid from Egypt into Gaza to ease the plight of civilians in the besieged enclave.
As he concluded his visit, Netanyahu’s office released a statement saying Israel would allow food, water and medicine to enter the southern Gaza Strip via Egypt. She reiterated that she would not allow aid from Israel until Hamas released its hostages.
Reporting by Nidal Mughrabi in Gaza, Steve Holland aboard Air Force One and Jerusalem Bureau, writing by Peter Graff, editing by Gareth Jones
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