US President Joe Biden hinted to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that Washington might limit support for Israel in its war against Hamas if Israel did not protect civilians and foreign aid workers in Gaza.
Biden’s statement followed an Israeli attack that killed seven staff members of the humanitarian organisation World Central Kitchen (WCK).
Israel admitted the strike had been a mistake.
The White House, however, did not specify exactly what it would do if Netanyahu did not act. But analysts including Dennis Ross, a veteran US diplomat now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued that the implicit threat was to slow US arms shipments to Israel or limit US support at the UN.
The president, in effect, is saying meet these humanitarian needs or I will have no choice but to condition [military] assistance.
Describing his call, the White House reported that Biden urged Israel “to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.” But US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was blunter.
“Look, I’ll just say this: if we don’t see the changes that we need to see, there will be changes in our policy.”
Israel stated on Friday that it was taking steps to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, including opening the Ashdod Port and the Erez Crossing into the hard-hit northern Gaza, and would also increase aid shipments from Jordan. Netanyahu’s office announced the plans just hours after President Joe Biden told him that future US support for the Gaza war depended on Israel taking more action to protect civilians and aid workers.
A senior White House official described the conversation as “very direct, very straightforward,” arguing that it involved Vice President Kamala Harris, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Blinken.
Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, stated that Biden was unlikely to take decisive actions that destroy the US-Israeli relationship, such as giving up expensive weapons or abandoning Israel at the UN completely. However, Biden could place conditions on smaller military goods and take further action against extremist Jewish settlers involved in attacks on Palestinians, Panikoff added.
Biden’s frustration with how the war is being conducted, and with Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, has reached an apex.
Despite the controversy, the Biden administration continues to provide Israel with crucial military aid and diplomatic support in Israel’s six-month war against Hamas. Israel faces increasing international isolation after its forces killed seven aid workers helping to deliver food to Gaza.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, the Palestinian death toll topped 33,000 on Thursday, with another 75,600 injured, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported. Meanwhile, a cross-border Hamas attack on 7 October killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages.
