Biden says Netanyahu’s approach to war is wrong, widening divide between two allies

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the Gaza war a mistake and called on his government to flood the besieged territory with aid, intensifying pressure on Israel to achieve a ceasefire and widening the gap between the two staunch allies.

Palestinians in Gaza marked a quiet start to the Eid al-Fitr holiday, with parents visiting the graves of their sons and daughters killed during the war. After morning prayers, Muslims often visit the resting places of their loved ones during the three-day festival marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

At a cemetery in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Samahir Za’neen crouched over the headstone of her 20-year-old son, killed in an airstrike in January while walking in the city. “His Eid (is) in heaven, God willing,” she said.

Biden has been a staunch supporter of Israel’s war against Hamas since the militant group launched a deadly attack on October 7. But in recent weeks, his patience with Netanyahu has appeared to be waning and his administration has taken a tougher line on Israel, undermining the decades-old alliance between the two countries and deepening Israel’s international isolation over of the war.

The most serious disagreement concerns Israel’s plans for an offensive in the southernmost Gaza town of Rafah, and the divide has widened since then, worsened by an Israeli airstrike last week on a humanitarian convoy. , which killed seven workers at food charity World Central Kitchen, most of them foreigners. Israel said the deaths were unintentional, but Biden was outraged.

Biden’s comments, made in an interview broadcast Tuesday evening after being recorded two days after the WCK attack, highlight differences between Israel and the United States over humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, where a Month-long war led to warnings of impending famine.

“What he is doing is wrong. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden told Spanish-language television station Univision.

He was responding to the question of whether Netanyahu was prioritizing his political survival over the national interest.

Biden said Israel should agree to a ceasefire, flood besieged Gaza with aid for the next six to eight weeks and allow other countries in the region to help distribute the aid. “It should be done now,” he said.

Hunger in Gaza overshadows the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, a typically joyful holiday in which families celebrate the end of Ramadan.

Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of the war, but under US pressure it slowly increased the number of trucks allowed into the territory. Yet aid groups complain that supplies are not getting to desperate people quickly enough, blaming Israeli restrictions, and countries have tried other ways to deliver them, including by air and sea.

Israel says it has gradually increased its aid throughout the war, opening more entry points for trucks to enter and reach particularly hard-hit areas like northern Gaza, one of Israel’s first targets in the war. .

Israel criticizes aid groups for being too slow to deliver aid once it is inside Gaza. These groups say logistical problems and the precarious security situation – highlighted by the WCK strike – are making it difficult to deliver aid.

Israel and Hamas are currently engaged in talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages captured by Hamas and others who crossed the border on October 7. But the parties remain sharply divergent on key issues, including the return of Palestinians to hard-hit northern Gaza. Netanyahu’s security cabinet met Tuesday evening to discuss hostage negotiations, but did not appear to make any decisions.

Netanyahu has pledged to achieve “total victory” in the war, pledging to destroy Hamas’s military and government capabilities to prevent a repeat of the October 7 attacks and returning hostages. He says victory must include an offensive in Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’s last major stronghold but where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents currently seek refuge.

Six months into the war, Israel is increasingly isolated, with even its closest partner increasingly expressing discontent with the direction of the war and its longtime trading partners like Turkey. taking potentially painful economic measures to express their dismay.

Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, is under pressure to decide on a post-war vision for Gaza. But critics say he is delaying because he does not want to anger his ultranationalist ruling partners, who support resettlement of the Gaza Strip, from which Israel withdrew in 2005 and an idea Netanyahu has ruled out.

Netanyahu’s ruling partners also oppose any significant concessions to Hamas in the ongoing negotiations. They threatened to leave the government – ​​a move that would lead to the collapse of the ruling coalition and trigger new elections.

“If the prime minister thinks there is going to be an irresponsible deal, it will not pass,” Limor Sonn Har Melech, a lawmaker from the radical Jewish Power party, said in an interview with an Israeli radio station. . “If we realize that stopping this war means capitulating to Hamas, we will not succeed.”

Israel launched the war in response to the Hamas cross-border attack, in which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

More than 33,200 Palestinians have been killed in the continuing fighting, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and fighters in its tally but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel claims to have killed some 12,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war triggered a humanitarian catastrophe. Most of the territory’s population has been displaced and, with large swathes of Gaza’s urban landscape razed by fighting, many areas are uninhabitable.