Biden Says Evidence Suggests Israel Not Responsible For Gaza Hospital Blast As He Begins Solidarity Trip: “It Appears As Though It Was Done By The Other Team”
UPDATE, 6:21 a.m. PT: President Joe Biden said that he would ask the Congress to pass an “unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense.”
Speaking during his visit to Israel, Biden said that the U.S. will “keep Iron Dome fully supplied so that they can continue standing sentinel over Israeli skies, saving Israeli lives.”
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As of now, nothing can move through the House of Representatives because Republicans have been unable to elect a new speaker. Another vote on Jim Jordon’s bid is scheduled for this morning, but there are doubts that he has the vote and increasing talk of empowering speaker pro tem Patrick McHenry with the ability to move legislation on a temporary basis.
The president also said that Israel had agreed that humanitarian aid can be transported from Egypt to Gaza. He said that is Hamas “diverts or steals the assistance, they will have demonstrated once again that they have no concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people and it will end.”
In his remarks, Biden reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel.
“Israel will be safe, secure and a Jewish and democratic state, today, tomorrow and forever,” Biden said.
Biden also offered words of caution to the Israelis. “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
PREVIOUSLY, 6:20 a.m. PT: President Joe Biden told reporters that “the data I was shown by my Defense Department” is what made him confident that Israel was not responsible for the deadly blast at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds of patients and civilians.
Biden was meeting with first responders and victims’ families. He met a young woman who saved people during the Hamas attack on her kibbutz and, after hearing her story through a translator, hugged her.
“I’ve had the opportunity to meet so many Israelis over the last few days … I’ve heard the stories. I’ve heard about the lives lost and changed forever,” Biden told them, per a pool report.
“I think the safety and security worldwide is anchored…in Israel,” he said.
He also recalled the first time he was in Israel and meeting Golda Meir.
Hamas blamed the hospital explosion on an Israeli airstrike. But the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) presented photographic evidence on Wednesday that it said showed Israel was not responsible for the blast.
PREVIOUSLY, 4:07 a.m. PT: U.S. President Joe Biden told a press conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday that Israel did not appear to be responsible for a deadly blast at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza on Tuesday evening, which has inflamed tensions across the Middle East.
“I’m deeply saddened and outraged at the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. And based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, and not you. But there’s a lot of people out there who are not sure,” Biden said in a joint press briefing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president was making his comments as he began a trip to Israel to signal U.S. solidarity for the country in the aftermath of the Hamas terror attack on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 and resulted in the taking of 199 hostages.
Hamas has said the hospital explosion was due to an Israeli airstrike, but the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) presented photographic evidence on Wednesday that it said showed Israel was not responsible for the blast which killed hundreds of patients and sheltering civilians.
The IDF is pointing the finger instead at a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group. The group immediately issued a statement refuting the IDF accusations.
The blast unleashed a raft street protests across the Middle East overnight, including an attempt to storm the Israeli consulate in Istanbul.
It comes amid growing worldwide condemnation of the developing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where more than 3,000 people have died since Israel began its bombing campaign, while 2.1 million population is facing water and food shortages and is without electricity.
Biden was to have travelled on to neighboring Jordan for a summit with Arab world leaders including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, but Jordan cancelled the meeting in response to the Gaza hospital blast.
Against this backdrop, Biden reiterated his support for Israel in the press conference, declaring: “I want to say to the people of Israel: Their courage, their commitment, their bravery, is stunning… I am proud to be here.”
Biden is expected to discuss Israel’s military response to the Hamas attacks and its plans for securing the release of hostages in meetings with Netanyahu, Herzog and the Israeli war cabinet at the Kirya military compound in Tel Aviv.
Family members of the people taken hostage as gathered outside the base holding banners calling for their missing loved ones to be brought back home safely.
The developing humanitarian crisis in Gaza will also be on the agenda.
Political commentators have suggested the latter issue could lead to tensions between the allies in the coming days, depending on what course of action the government decides to take.
“What happens not just during Biden’s trip, but after, will reveal whether Israel’s new emergency government hears and acts on both messages, or whether, the wake of Biden’s departure, a rift begins to manifest itself, as will surely happen if the onslaught in Gaza becomes the calamity for Palestinian innocents that many fear,” wrote U.S. political commentator David Rothkopf in an article for left-leaning Israel broadsheet Haaretz on Wednesday.
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