The White House downplayed US President Joe Biden’s claim that the IDF indiscriminately bombed Gaza, rejecting accusations that he had implicated Israel in war crimes.
“The president was reflecting a concern that we have had for some time and we will continue to have as this military operation proceeds about the need for reducing civilian harm and being as precise and careful as possible,” US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
Biden was “speaking to his concerns about making sure we are seeing the results that Israel has said was their intent, which was to reduce civilian casualties,” Kirby stated.
He clarified that US “support for Israel is not diminished.”
Kirby spoke as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was set to arrive in Israel on Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and with the war cabinet.
He is expected to discuss the possibility of the resumption of the hostage deal, which would exchange a pause in the fighting for Hamas’s release of some of the 135 hostages he is holding.
Sullivan is expected to urge Israel to re-open its Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza to allow for the entry of an expanded volume of humanitarian aid through Kerem Shalom for the entry of goods, something that has not happen since October 7.
He will also discuss the timetable for Israel’s military campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza, amid increased international pressure for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, Kirby said. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected to visit the region next week.
The US is also working to allow for brief daily pauses, Sullivan explained.
Netanyahu said Wednesday he was determined to push on until he had destroyed Hamas.
“We are continuing to the end, until victory, until the destruction of Hamas. Let there be no doubt about this,” Netanyahu said.
Biden during a campaign event on Tuesday warned Israel it was losing international support as he issued his most scathing critique of Israel since the start of the war.
“Israel’s security can rest on the United States,” Biden stated, as he touted his government’s strong support of Israel.
Right now, however, Israel has wider support than just the US, Biden explained, as he pointed to the European Union and the international community, which has also backed the Jewish state in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attack.
“But they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place” in Gaza, Biden said, in a statement that implied Israel was needlessly targeting civilians.
He has remained staunch in his support for Israel providing military and financial aid. The US will “do everything in our power to hold Hamas accountable – every single thing in our power. They’re animals. They exceeded anything that any other terrorist group has done,” Biden said on Tuesday.
But Biden has become increasingly vocal about the importance of Israel maintaining a low civilian casualty count and ensuring the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Hamas has assured that over 18,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in war-related violence, with Israel insisting that at least 7,000 of those are combatants.
During the campaign event, Biden explained that Israel has put forward the argument that its casualty count was not unusual for wars in which one faced a brutal enemy, drawing a comparison between its battle with Hamas and the Allied force’s war against Germany and Japan in World War II.
“It was pointed out to me – I’m being very blunt with you all – it was pointed out to me that – by Bibi – that ‘Well, you carpet-bombed Germany. You dropped the atom bomb. A lot of civilians died,” Biden said as he recounted his conversation with Netanyahu.
“I said, ‘Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War II to see to it that it didn’t happen again,’” Biden recalled.
He cautioned Israel not to make the same mistake the US did in the aftermath of the al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
‘There was no reason why we had to do some of the things we did” in that US military campaign against al-Qaeda, Biden said.
He has been heavily involved in attempts to help secure the release of some 135 people still held in captivity in Gaza, some of whom hold dual Israeli-American citizenship.
Also, the Biden administration had intended to present Israel with a series of steps that needed to be taken to allow for the creation of a Palestinian state as part of the potential normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and the Jewish state.
“One of the things we had planned and put on the table was a very robust number of steps toward an independent Palestinian state,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Wednesday.
This was something “we were actively working on in the lead-up to the October 7” attack by Hamas against southern Israel, he said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had been scheduled to visit Israel and Saudi Arabia to discuss a normalization deal between the two countries, but that trip as planned had never happened.
Instead, Hamas infiltrated southern Israel, murdered more than 1,200 people, and seized some 240 hostages, which immediately froze the Saudi deal.
The Biden administration, however, has spoken of the need to launch a new peace process after the Gaza war to create a two-state resolution to the conflict, with the Palestinian state encompassing territory in Gaza and the West Bank.
It has supported Israel’s military campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza and has called for a revamped Palestinian Authority to govern the enclave.
An Associated Press poll published Wednesday showed that 60% of the Palestinians in the West Bank want the PA to be dissolved. The poll, which had a 4% margin of error, was conducted among 1,231 people from November 22 to December 2.
It was conducted amid high Palestinian casualties as a result of the Gaza war. Hamas on Wednesday said more than 18,000 Palestinians have been killed, without differentiating between terrorists and civilians, or between those killed in Israeli strikes and those killed in Hamas’s own missiles that fell short. Israel has said at least 7,000 of those killed in Gaza were Hamas combatants.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank said they backed Hamas’s October 7 attack, the poll showed. Support for Hamas has decreased and now represents 44% of those in the West Bank and 42% in Gaza.
Ninety-two percent of those polled said they wanted PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign.
No support for PA control of Gaza
Netanyahu has said the PA cannot govern Gaza once the war is over, adding that the 1993 Oslo Accord that created it was a mistake.
Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely told Sky News she did not support Palestinian statehood.
The “Oslo paradigm failed on October 7, and we need to build a new one,” Hotovely said. “The biggest question is what type of Palestinians are on the other side; that is what Israel realized on October 7.”
The reason Oslo failed is because “the Palestinians never wanted to have a state next to Israel,” she said. “They wanted to have a state from the River to the Sea.”
Hotovely told the interviewer: “Why are you obsessed with a formula that never worked; that created these radical people on the other side.”
In Washington on Tuesday, Biden called on Netanyahu to change the makeup of his coalition to allow for support for a two-state resolution to the conflict.
“Israeli has a tough decision to make,” he said. “Bibi has got a tough decision to make. There’s no question about the need to take on Hamas. There’s no question about that. None. Zero. They have every right.”
“This government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move” forward, so “I think he has to change... this government,” Biden said. “This is the most conservative government in Israel’s history – the most conservative. I’ve known every, every single head of state in Israel since Golda Meir. And I’ve known them because I’ve spent time with them.”
He highlighted in particular National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit), saying those in the government now are a “different group” then previous coalitions.
“Ben-Gvir and company and the new folks, they – they don’t want anything remotely approaching a two-state solution,” Biden said. “They not only want to have retribution,” but “they don’t want a two-state solution. They don’t want any – anything having to with the – the Palestinians.”
He acknowledged that the Palestinians have not done a good job at governance, and that “a lot has happened that’s very negative,” adding that this does not absolve Israel of the obligation to move forward with a two-state resolution to the conflict.
“We have to work toward bringing Israel together in a way that provides for the beginning of an option – an option of a two-state [solution],” Biden said. “Such a move is important if Israel wants to advance its regional ties such as with Saudi Arabia.”
Biden met with family members of Americans held hostage by Hamas on Wednesday. Relatives of the Americans who are deemed unaccounted after the Oct. 7 attended the gathering at the White House, either in person or by phone. Biden previously held a virtual meeting with hostages’ families on Oct. 13.
Sullivan has met with the families numerous times, the official said, and was expected to discuss the hostages during his trip to Israel this week.
“We met today with President Biden and then people from the administration. It was a terrific meeting, conversation,” one of the family members, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, said afterwards.
“I think we all came away feeling that as families of hostages of American Israelis ... that we could have no better friend in Washington or in the White House than President Biden,” he added.
Two Americans, Natalie and Judith Raanan, became the first hostages to be released on Oct. 20.
During a subsequent pause in Israel’s military operation, a four-year-old American girl, Abigail Edan, was among 17 hostages freed by Hamas on Nov. 26. A fourth American, Liat Beinin, was among 16 released on Nov. 29, the final day of a truce in the Gaza war.
Reuters contributed to this report.