Biden warns Netanyahu of shift in policy
Ally places conditions on military aid; UN says attacks may amount to ‘war crimes’
WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden threatened on Thursday to condition support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza on it taking concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians, seeking for the first time to leverage US aid to influence Israeli military behavior.
Biden’s warning, relayed in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, followed a deadly Israeli attack on World Central Kitchen aid workers that spurred new calls from Biden’s fellow Democrats to place conditions on US military support to Israel.
Biden, a lifelong supporter of Israel, has resisted pressure to withhold aid or halt the shipment of weapons to the country. His warning marked the first time he has threatened to potentially condition aid, a development that could change the dynamic of the nearly 6-month-old conflict.
Biden “made clear the need for 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”, the White House said of the leaders’ phone call.
The president “made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps”, the White House said.
Washington is Israel’s top weapons supplier and the Biden administration has mostly provided a diplomatic shield for it at the United Nations.
At a briefing after the call, White House spokesman John Kirby declined to elaborate on any specific changes the US would make in its policy toward Israel and Gaza.
By suggesting that a shift in US policy toward Gaza was possible if Israel did not address the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave, Biden channeled his own frustration along with mounting pressure from his left-leaning political base in the Democratic Party to stop the killings and alleviate hunger among innocent civilians.
When asked about possible changes in US policy, Netanyahu’s spokeswoman Tal Heinrich told Fox News, “I think it’s something that Washington will have to explain.”
Later, the White House welcomed moves by Israel to open the Ashdod port and Erez crossing to increase deliveries of humanitarian aid and to step up deliveries from Jordan directly into Gaza.
But these steps “must now be fully and rapidly implemented”, White House spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said.
On Monday, Israel launched an attack that killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen group, founded by celebrity chef Jose Andres. But Israel said the attack was a mistake. Andres told Reuters on Wednesday that the Israeli attack had targeted his aid workers “systematically, car by car”.
On Friday, an Israeli inquiry into the airstrike found serious errors and breaches of procedure by the military, with the result that two officers have been dismissed and senior commanders formally reprimanded.
The inquiry found Israeli forces mistakenly believed they were attacking Hamas gunmen when drone strikes hit the three vehicles of the World Central Kitchen aid convoy, but that standard procedures had been violated.
However, the charity demanded on Friday that an independent commission investigate the killing of its seven aid workers by Israel Defense Forces.
“The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” it said.
The White House had described Biden as outraged and heartbroken by the attack, but prior to Thursday’s call, the president had made no fundamental change in Washington’s steadfast support for Israel in its conflict against Hamas.
Laura Blumenfeld, a Middle East analyst at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said the strike on World Central Kitchen aid workers “was the last straw”.
“This call was the long-promised ‘come to Jesus conversation’ that Biden said last month he would have with Netanyahu,” Blumenfeld said.
Following the deadly strike, the United Nations Human Rights Office said on Friday that attacks against people involved in humanitarian assistance may amount to “war crimes”.
This week also saw a suspected deadly Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed 16 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Israel has declined to comment on the Damascus strike, but analysts saw it as an escalation of Israel’s campaign against Iran’s regional proxies that runs the risk of triggering a wider war.
Among the dead were seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.