FALCONPOWERS – President Joe Biden on Thursday told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the overall humanitarian situation in Gaza is unacceptable and warned Israel to take steps to address the crisis or face consequences, a stark statement from Israel’s staunchest ally.
The 30-minute conversation was the two leaders’ first phone call since an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in Gaza. The killings have set off a furor inside the White House and Biden has been described as reaching a new level of frustration with Israel’s campaign.
“President Biden emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable,” the White House said in a statement shortly after the call wrapped. “He made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”
Biden also said Israel needed to “announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.”
Speaking in Brussels after the call, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the stakes clear: “If we don’t see the changes that we need to see, there’ll be changes in our own policy,” he said. However, neither Blinken nor National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, speaking later at the White House press briefing, detailed what those potential policy changes could be.
Kirby said the US “would hope to see some announcements of changes here in the coming hours and days – and I’ll leave it at that.”
The call amounts to perhaps the most serious sign of Biden’s frustration with Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which was launched in the wake of the October 7 attacks by Hamas. In the time since, more than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry, and grisly reports of civilian deaths are made every day.
The war has become one of Biden’s chief domestic political problems ahead of November’s election as key parts of his voter coalition have been outraged by the president’s support for Israel’s war. Protests have popped up at nearly every public event the president has held outside the White House in recent months and he was confronted in an intimate meeting with Muslim leaders earlier this week with stark opposition to the US’ policy toward the war.
That political conundrum made Thursday’s call and the statements from Blinken and Kirby particularly notable, as both men indicated possible change in the US’ posture toward the war may come if Israel keeps up its current practices.
Blinken said Israel should not stoop to the level of Hamas in its response to the group’s October 7 attacks.
