US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that “the conduct of the response in Gaza” has been “over the top,” in unclear remarks widely understood and reported as a fierce critique of Israel, but which may have been made in reference to this week’s Hamas ceasefire proposal.
The White House did not respond to requests to elaborate on or clarify Biden’s remarks.
The president made the comments at the tail end of a White House press conference. As he was leaving the room, reporters shouted a hail of questions at him, including about “the hostage negotiations” and “Netanyahu says he’s ordered the IDF…”
The president turned back and said, “The hostage negotiations, look …” and returned to the microphone.
“I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza, in the Gaza Strip, has been over the top. I think that, as you know, the president of Mexico, Sissi” — Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi is, in fact, president of Egypt — “did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate. I talked to Bibi [Netanyahu] to open the gate on the Israeli side.”
Biden went on: “I’ve been pushing really hard, really hard, to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s gotta stop. Number one.”
“Number two: I was also in the position that I’m the guy who made the case that we have to do much more to increase the amount of material going in, including fuel, including other items. I’ve been on the phone with the Qataris. I’ve been on the phone with the Egyptians. I’ve been on the phone with the Saudis to get as much aid as we possibly can into Gaza. They’re innocent people, innocent women and children who are also in bad, badly need of help. And so that’s what we’re pushing.
“And I’m pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage ceasefire,” he continued. “Because, you know, I’ve been working tirelessly for this deal — how can I say this without revealing it — to lead to a sustained pause in the fighting in, in the actions taking place, in the Gaza Strip. And, because I think if we can get the delay for that, an initial delay, I think that we would be able to extend that so that we can increase the prospect that this fighting in Gaza changes.”
Biden’s remarks about an “over the top” response appeared to be in response to the shouted question about “the hostage negotiations,” echoing the phrase “over the top” that he used on Wednesday to describe the Hamas response to a US- and Israel-backed framework proposal for a truce-for-hostages deal. In Wednesday’s remarks, he also appeared to forget the name of the Hamas terror group while answering questions from reporters on progress in talks for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
However, his Thursday comments were somewhat ambiguous. They were widely reported as marking a critique of Israel’s conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, which his Secretary of State Antony Blinken harshly criticized on Wednesday, and where Biden has previously accused Israel of “indiscriminate bombing.”
The remarks come as the Democratic president has come under increasing domestic pressure to press Israel on a ceasefire.
The president, in his remarks, also recalled pre-war negotiations on Saudi-Israel normalization, to help Israel fully integrate into the Middle East and defend itself against Iran. And he suggested, without offering proof, that Hamas struck on October 7 to try to prevent this process.
Afterward, the president issued a memorandum that requires US allies who receive military aid from the US to provide “credible and reliable written assurances” of their adherence to international law including international human rights law.
It will also, for the first time, require the State Department and the Department of Defense to issue periodic reports on whether allies are meeting the requirements.
While the memo does not name Israel, it comes amid increasing calls on the US to condition aid to Israel due to concerns over its military actions in Gaza.
War broke out between Israel and Hamas following the October 7 massacre which saw about 3,000 Hamas terrorists infiltrate Israel under a barrage of rockets, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253. An estimated 136 hostages remain in Gaza, around 30 of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s ensuing military campaign against Hamas has seen over 27,000 Palestinians killed, according to the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry. These numbers, however, cannot be independently verified and are believed to include over 10,000 members of Hamas’s military wing who have been killed in battle and Gazans killed by misfired rockets.
Following the breakout of the war, Biden offered wholehearted support to Israel. The president visited the country 10 days after the massacre in a show of solidarity and sent two US aircraft carriers to the region to deter the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah from joining the war against Israel.
Biden and other US officials have continued to stand behind Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas, but have expressed increasing concern over the civilian death toll, suffering and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, and the lack of clarity from Israel regarding the “day after” in Gaza. And they have pushed for Israel to agree to advance progress toward a two-state solution with a reformed Palestinian Authority ruling in the West Bank and Gaza — with Netanyahu repeatedly rejecting full Palestinian sovereignty and post-war PA rule.