(AFP) – US President Joe Biden faced growing calls Thursday to turn outrage over the deaths of seven aid workers in Gaza into conditions on military support for Israel, as he prepared to confront Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the incident.
In his first call with Netanyahu since an Israeli strike killed the employees of the US-based World Central Kitchen group, Biden was expected to express anger and urge Israel to do more to protect humanitarian staff and civilians.
But amid rising domestic anger in a US election year over Biden’s support for Israel, his political allies stepped up pressure on him to finally use the leverage afforded by the billions of dollars in military aid that Washington gives Israel.
“I think we’re at that point,” Chris Coons, a Biden confidant and senator from the president’s home state of Delaware, told CNN.
If Israel began its long-threatened full-scale offensive in the southern city of Rafah, without plans for some 1.5 million people sheltering there, “I would vote to condition aid to Israel,” Coons said.
“I’ve never said that before, I’ve never been there before,” he added.
Biden also reportedly faces pressure from even closer to home — from First Lady Jill Biden.
“Stop it, stop it now,” she told the president about the growing toll of civilian casualties in Gaza, according to comments by Biden himself to a guest during a meeting with members of the Muslim community at the White House, and reported by the New York Times.
– ‘Outraged and heartbroken’ –
Biden has sharpened his rhetoric over Israel’s conduct of the nearly six-month-old war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, voicing growing frustration with Israel’s right-wing premier in particular.
In his strongest statement since the war began, Biden said Tuesday that he was “outraged and heartbroken” by Israel’s killing of the seven aid workers, who included a US-Canadian citizen.
But Biden’s words have not been matched by any concrete steps to limit the huge flow of military aid that Washington supplies to its bedrock regional ally.
Many Democrats fear it could hurt his chances of reelection in November against Republican Donald Trump, as Muslim and younger voters express their anger over the Gaza War.
A former senior aide to Barack Obama — the president under whom Biden served as vice president — called for Biden’s actions to back his words.
“The US government is still supplying 2 thousand pound bombs and ammunition to support Israel’s policy,” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor in Obama’s administration, said on X. “”Until there are substantive consequences, this outrage does nothing. Bibi (Netanyahu) obviously doesn’t care what the US says, its about what the US does.”
Democratic senator Chris Murphy, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Middle East, said that Israel “needs to pause military operations in Gaza right now.”
US voters are also increasingly turning against Israel’s Gaza offensive.
A majority of 55 percent now disapprove of Israel’s actions, against 36 percent who approve, according to a Gallup poll released on March 27.
– Danny KEMP
© 2024 AFP
