Biden warns Netanyahu U.S. support at risk on Gaza
“If we don’t see changes on their (Israeli) side, there will have to be changes on our side,” NSC spokesman John Kirby said.
President Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an unusually stark phone call today that continued U.S. support for Israel on Gaza will be conditioned on Israel swiftly announcing and implementing changes to humanitarian restrictions and conduct that have put Gaza on the brink of famine and led to the deaths of over 200 aid workers and thousands of Palestinian civilians.
“If we don’t see changes on their side, there will have to be changes on our side,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby summarized the President’s message in the call.
Calling Israel’s strikes on humanitarian workers and the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza “unacceptable,” President Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete and measureable steps to address civilian harm…and the safety of aid workers,” the White House said in a readout of the thirty minute call that conveyed a series of U.S. ultimatums.
“He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” it continued.
“We need to see certain changes” from the Israelis, the NSC’s Kirby said at the White House briefing today. “And if we don’t, then we’ll have to consider changes to our own policy.”
“This week’s horrific attack on the World Central Kitchen was not the first such incident,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels today. “It must be the last.”
“Here's the current reality in Gaza: despite important steps that Israel has taken to allow assistance into Gaza, the results on the ground are woefully insufficient and unacceptable," Blinken said.
The White House readout of the call also suggested that President Biden is not convinced that Netanyahu has given his negotiators enough leeway to be able to reach a deal to gain the release of some 100 hostages held by Hamas at indirect talks hosted by Egypt and Qatar that have been stalled for weeks.
Biden “underscored that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation…and he urged the Prime Minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay to bring the hostages home,” the readout said.
“Look, it takes active participation and negotiation of both sides here,” the NSC’s Kirby said at the White House briefing. “And that's what the President is urging…that the Prime Minister empower his team to the maximum extent possible to see if we can get this deal in place.”
The White House readout also sought to warn Iran and Hezbollah against misinterpreting Biden’s apparent calling Netanyahu to the carpet over Israel’s disregard for the lives of civilians and aid workers in Gaza.
“The two leaders also discussed public Iranian threats against Israel and the Israeli people,” it said. “President Biden made clear that the United States strongly supports Israel in the face of those threats.”
Israel has been bracing for possible retaliation after it earlier this week bombed an Iranian facility next to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing several senior IRGC officials. The U.S. said it had nothing to do with the strike and had not been notified of it in advance.
“We were not notified by the Israelis about their strike or the intended target of their strike in Damascus,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.
‘Everybody is a target’
Numerous humanitarian aid workers say that Israeli forces regularly strike at aid convoys and facilities in Gaza even after their movements have been “de-conflicted” with the Israeli military, threatening their ability to continue aid operations in Gaza.
“The conclusion you reach when you understand how and where people were targeted…is that everybody’s a target,” Tanya Haj-Hassan, with Medical Aid for Palestine, and recently back from a March trip to Gaza, told reporters on a zoom call hosted by Crisis Action this morning. “The evidence on the ground doesn’t suggest that there’s a war against Hamas. …Everybody’s a target.”
“This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place," Chef José Andrés, founder of the humanitarian group World Central Kitchen, told Reuters of Israel killing seven WCK staff in three drone strikes this week.
“They were targeting us in a deconflicting zone, in an area controlled by IDF,” he said. “They knowing that it was our teams moving on that road ... with three cars.”
“The U.S. must do more to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu this war needs to end now," Andrés said.
**