Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the war in Gaza is a “mistake,” US President Joe Biden said in an interview on Tuesday, offering further criticism of the way the close ally is approaching the conflict.
“I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden said in comments to Univision, a Spanish-language broadcaster in the United States.
Biden had already defined the Israeli bombing of Gaza as “indiscriminate” and the Israeli military actions as “exaggerated”.
The White House said last week that the president, in a phone call with Netanyahu, threatened to condition U.S. support on taking concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians. The conversation took place after an Israeli airstrike that killed seven employees of the humanitarian organization World Central Kitchen.
“What I ask is that the Israelis simply call for a ceasefire and allow, for the next six, eight weeks, full access to all the food and medicine coming into the country,” Biden said in the interview.
Israel’s military attack on Gaza has come under growing international criticism. In the United States, Biden has faced months of protests from Muslim and Arab-American activists calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and restrictions on U.S. military assistance to Israel.
According to Israeli records, the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 killed 1,200 people. Israel’s subsequent retaliation killed more than 33,000 people, according to Gaza health officials, displaced nearly the entire population of 2.3 million people and led to charges of genocide that Israel denies. The enclave also suffers from widespread hunger.
Israel has received more foreign aid from the United States than any other country since World War II, although the annual assistance has been dwarfed by two years by funding and military equipment sent to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The United States traditionally patronizes Israel in the United Nations (UN) Security Council and has vetoed three draft resolutions on the war on Gaza. The country abstained from the latest vote last month, allowing the council to call for an immediate ceasefire.
Source: Terra
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