War on Gaza: Joe Biden says Netanyahu’s approach is a ‘mistake’ and opens gap with his Israeli ally

US President Joe Biden described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the Gaza war as wrong and asked that his government flood the devastated territory with humanitarian aid. The words of the president they turned up the pressure for the Israeli authorities to reach a ceasefire and they widened the gap opened by the conflict between the two firm allies.

The Palestinians started in the Strip celebrating Eid al-Fitr in silence, with parents visit the graves of his sons killed in the war. After morning prayers, it is customary for Muslims to visit the resting place of their loved ones. during the three days that the festival lasts That marks the end of the holy month of fasting, Ramadan.

In a cemetery in Deir al-Balah, in the center of the territory, Samahir Za’neen crouched next to the gravestone of his 20-year-old son, who was killed in an airstrike in January as he walked through the city. “Your Eid (is) in heaven, God willing,” he said.

Biden he openly supported Israel’s war against Hamas after the deadly assault by the rebel group on October 7, but in recent weeks his patience with Netanyahu appears to have waned and his government has taken a firmer stance on Israel, threatening a decades-long alliance and the expansion of Israel’s international isolation due to the conflict.

Their biggest disagreement is over Israel’s plans launch an offensive on Rafah, in Gaza’s southernmost city, and disagreements have escalated since then, exacerbated by last week’s Israeli attack on a humanitarian aid convoy that killed seven workers from the NGO World Central Kitchen, most of them foreigners. Israel has said the deaths were unintentional, but Biden has expressed outrage at what happened.

In an interview broadcast Tuesday night, Biden highlighted the differences between the two countries on humanitarian aid to the population of Gaza, where more than six months of war have raised the alarm of an imminent famine.

“What you are doing is a mistake”

“What you are doing is a mistake. “I don’t agree with your approach,” Biden told US Spanish-language television Univision in an interview recorded on April 3, two days after the Israeli attack on a convoy of the NGO World Central Kitchen. From whether Netanyahu prioritizes his political survival over national interest.

Biden noted that Israel they had to agree to a ceasefireflood Gaza with humanitarian aid over the next six to eight weeks and allow countries in the region to help distribute it. “It should be done now”he pointed.

Hunger in Gaza is overshadowing Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holiday usually happy in which families celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Israel stopped providing humanitarian aid to Gaza in the first days of the war but, under pressure from the United States, The number of trucks slowly increased who access the territory. Humanitarian groups, for their part, complain that supplies are not reaching the desperate population quickly enough, which they blame on Israeli restrictions, and some countries have sought alternative methods such as dropping food by parachute or transporting it by sea.

Israel says there has been a steady increase in supplies entering the Strip during the war, with more ports of entry opening to allow trucks to reach particularly hard-hit areas such as northern Gaza. And he accuses NGOs of being very slow in distribution. According to the groups, logistical problems and the precarious security situation – accentuated by the attack on the WCK – complicate the distribution.

Negotiations for a truce

Israel and Hamas are engaged in negotiations to reach a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages captured during the rebel assault, but they remain distant on key issues like the return of the Palestinians to the north of the Strip, which was practically devastated on the offensive.

Netanyahu has promised “total victory” in the war, with the destruction of Hamas’ military and governance capabilities to prevent a repeat of the October 7 assault and the return of hostages.

Israel launched the war in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas in which insurgents killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, as well as taking around 250 other hostages, according to Israeli officials.

His army’s relentless land and air campaign in Gaza has taken its toll. the lives of more than 33,300 Palestinians, This was stated by the Strip’s Ministry of Health, which in its count does not distinguish between civilian victims and combatants, but specifies that two thirds of the deaths They are women and minors. For its part, Israel claims, without providing evidence, to have killed around 12,000 rebels.

The war has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe: much of the population has been forced to abandon their homes and the fighting has devastated large swathes of Gaza’s urban landscape, leaving many areas uninhabitable.

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