The “conduct of the response in Gaza Strip has been over the top,” Biden said. “I’m pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage cease-fire. I’ve been working tirelessly on this deal … because I think if we can get the delay, the initial delay — I think we would be able to extend that so that we could increase the prospect that this fighting in Gaza changes.”
Biden, who has been resistant to speak in detail about the suffering in Gaza, also spoke in the most visceral terms yet about the desperation in the enclave.
“I’ve been pushing really hard to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. A lot of innocent people are starving. A lot of innocent people are in trouble and they’re dying and it’s got to stop,” Biden said.
The comments mark a stunning turnaround for Biden, who has an emotional attachment to Israel and has largely refused to criticize the country even as anger grows among left-leaning parts of the Democratic base over the war in Gaza and its enormous civilian toll. Israeli airstrikes and raids over the past four months have killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and created a humanitarian catastrophe in the densely populated enclave of more than 2 million people.
Israel’s military campaign came in response to an attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas militants, in which they rampaged through Israel’s border fence with Gaza and murdered 1,200 Israelis, many of them civilians, and took about 250 others hostage. Biden has twice circumvented Congress to send hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons to Israel, a move that has angered some Senate Democrats.
The president has resisted pressure to call for a cease-fire in Gaza, which polls show a majority of Democratic voters support. But his unwavering support of Israel has cost him politically as young voters, people of color and Arab American and Muslim Americans have strongly disapproved of his handling of the war. Still, Congress is debating a foreign aid bill that includes $14 billion of aid for Israel, which passed a key threshold in the Senate on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, a group of senior policy advisers traveled to Michigan, which has a large Arab American and Muslim population, to meet with members of the community and elected officials to try to shore up support. The state is critical to Biden’s path to a second term but the president faces serious problems there, particularly as many Arab American and Muslim voters mobilize to ensure members of their community do not support Biden in November.
Biden and his aides have grown exasperated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly ignored U.S. calls to limit civilian casualties, wind down military operations in Gaza and allow more aid into the enclave, where hundreds of thousands of residents are at risk of famine and disease.
In recent weeks, Netanyahu has publicly humiliated Biden despite hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons transfers and unwavering support, even as global condemnation mounts. Netanyahu has become increasingly defiant about the prospect of a two-state solution — which Biden has said must follow the end of the war — and this week rejected a deal that would see the release of some Israeli hostages in exchange for a long-term pause in fighting while Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region.
Netanyahu also angered U.S. officials when he vowed the Israeli military campaign would continue into Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled for safety under Israeli orders. On Thursday, White House spokesman John Kirby said any Israeli operation in Rafah under the current…
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