MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / July 12, 2024
The NATO summit speech comes as Israel continues bombing all areas of the Gaza Strip.
US President Joe Biden said that Israel has occasionally been “less than cooperative” regarding getting aid into the Gaza Strip.
Speaking at the 75th anniversary NATO summit in Washington, DC, Biden recalled his visit to Israel days after the 7 October Hamas-led attack on the country.
The American president says this trip saw him convince Netanyahu to allow aid into Gaza after Israel had imposed a full siege on the Palestinian enclave.
“We pushed [getting aid in] really hard. Israel occasionally was less than cooperative,” he said.
“I know Israel well, and I support Israel, but his war cabinet is one of the most conservative war cabinets in the history of Israel,” he added, though it was unclear if he was referring to the now-defunct Israeli war cabinet or the broader Israeli cabinet.
He then said that there are “a lot of things that in retrospect, I wish I had been able to convince Israelis to do”.
While the Israeli government claims that 300 trucks entered Gaza on Thursday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X that only five WHO trucks carrying medical supplies have been allowed to enter Gaza in the past week.
While Biden reiterated that it was “time to end this war”, he pointed out that ending the war would not stop Israel from going after Hamas’s leadership.
“Don’t make the same mistake America made after bin Laden,” he said. “There’s no need to occupy anywhere. Go after the people who did the job… Don’t think that’s what you should be doing, doubling down. We’ll help you find the bad guys – Sinwar and company.”
US officials had privately told The Times of Israel in May that Washington would support Israel going after Hamas’s leaders once the war was over.
Biden claims his post-war plan for Gaza will help pave the way for a two-state solution with Arab states “from Egypt all the way to Saudi Arabia” cooperating in the transition by keeping the peace in the enclave “without Israeli forces staying in Gaza”.
“The question that has been from the beginning [is], what’s the day after in Gaza? And the day after in Gaza has to be… no occupation by Israel of the Gaza Strip as well as the ability for us to access, get in and out as rapidly as you can all that’s needed there,” he said.
In slight contrast, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said at the summit that NATO cannot be allowed to continue its partnership with the Israeli government “until comprehensive, sustainable peace is established in Palestine”.
In Gaza, Israel bombed a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing three people, according to the WAFA news agency.
Fighting is still raging in Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa as Israel withdrew from Shujaiya, leaving behind a large trail of death and destruction.
The Israeli military also announced the death of a reservist after they were critically wounded by a Hezbollah drone attack on Kibbutz Kabri in northern Israel.
