Your actions hurt Israel more than helping it, Biden tells Netanyahu
Israel ‘must pay more attention to innocent lives being lost’
JOE Biden has said the war in Gaza is ‘hurting Israel more than helping Israel’ as international opinion continues to turn against its military actions.
The US president emphasised that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken’.
Ramping up his recent criticism of Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks, Mr Biden said ‘you cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead’.
His comments at the weekend came as the US and EU began efforts to establish a sea corridor to deliver much-needed aid to the Gaza Strip.
Western allies of Israel have grown frustrated at its failure to allow more aid across their shared land border. Meanwhile Israel’s
‘Innocent lives being lost’
navy has blockaded the Mediterranean Sea to prevent the possible delivery of weapons to Hamas on Gaza’s western coast.
Yesterday a giant US Army vessel left a base in Virginia carrying equipment to build a portable pier so that aid can be delivered.
The ship, the General Frank S Besson Jr, will stay for several weeks until the floating port is operational, but US troops will not set foot on Gaza’s soil.
Aid will then be brought along an EU-supervised sea route from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus.
The route is due to be tested today by a Spanish charity vessel normally used to rescue migrants but this time towing a barge of rice and flour.
US and European officials have said the aid will be distributed on the ground by UN agencies, NGOs and charities.
Joe Biden said he continues to support Israel’s right to defend itself and dismantle Gaza’s terrorist infrastructure after Hamas militants crossed the border on October 7 last year and murdered 1,200 innocent Israelis.
But its allies are increasingly questioning whether its response – which has flattened entire neighbourhoods with missiles and displaced about 80% of Gaza’s population – has crossed the bounds of proportionality.
The Health Ministry in Gaza has said that more than 31,000 Palestinians have died since the war began.
Meanwhile the territory is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis with severe shortages of food, water and medicines. The daily number of aid trucks entering Gaza has been far below the 500 that entered before the war. Israel said it welcomes the forthcoming sea deliveries but will inspect cargo for rogue weaponry before it leaves a staging area in Cyprus.
The new push for getting more aid in came on the eve of Ramadan, which begins today.
The US and mediators Egypt and Qatar had hoped to have a six-week ceasefire in place by the start of Ramadan which would have seen Hamas release some Israeli hostages and Israel release some Palestinian prisoners.