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Tel Aviv — President Biden issued some of his harshest criticism to date on Tuesday of Israel's conduct in its war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. With health officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip saying more than 18,000 people have been killed, Mr. Biden warned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government was losing international support due to "indiscriminate bombing" in the densely populated region.
Those comments put Mr. Biden at odds with Netanyahu, who has shown no willingness to ease the bombing campaign in southern Gaza despite catastrophic losses of civilian life and uncertainty over the fate of more than 100 hostages who are still believed to be held in the territory.
Israel's military says Hamas militants, in their bloody Oct. 7 terror rampage across southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people and abducted more than 200, roughly half of whom have since been released, most of them during a week-long cease-fire.
President Biden expressed strong criticism of Israel's actions in the ongoing conflict with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, has reported over 18,000 deaths. Biden warned that Benjamin Netanyahu's government is losing international support due to the indiscriminate bombing in the densely populated region.
This puts Biden in opposition to Netanyahu, who has refused to ease the bombing campaign in southern Gaza despite the high number of civilian casualties and the uncertain fate of over 100 hostages still believed to be held in the area.
According to Israel's military, during their violent rampage on October 7 in southern Israel, Hamas militants killed approximately 1,200 people and abducted over 200, with about half of them being released during a week-long cease-fire.
Biden has been facing criticism for his administration's response to the war, including his refusal to call for a new cease-fire. The White House and Netanyahu argue that a new truce would allow Hamas militants to regroup.
So, the war continues apace, and in southern Gaza, it was another night of blood-soaked casualties from Israeli airstrikes streaming into packed hospitals that are quickly running out of supplies.
For the second consecutive night, a missile struck just a few hundred yards from a local resident in southern Gaza, an area where Israel's military says there are "safe zones."
"It's a dangerous narrative. They are, quite simply, not safe," said a spokesperson for an international aid agency, who just left Gaza.
"It's a nightmare," the spokesperson told the media outlet. "They are under attack from the air and very much now from the threat of disease."
Israel has been urging Gazan civilians to seek shelter along the undeveloped southwest coast of Gaza, in a designated "humanitarian area" about the size of Los Angeles International Airport called al-Mawasi. It now holds several hundred thousand desperate people.
Asked by the media outlet if the humanitarian area is, in fact, humane, the spokesperson didn't hesitate:
"No," the spokesperson said. "A safe zone requires two things: One, not to be bombed… The second one… it must have living essentials, water, sanitation, food, protection."
"We suffered from the war of cannons, and escaped it to arrive at the war of starvation," Ibrahim Mahram, among those who fled to al-Mawasi, told the Reuters news agency. He said there were five families crammed into a single tent.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Wednesday that disease was spreading due to a lack of clean water, and that the few health facilities still functioning in the region had run completely out of children's vaccines.
Warning of "catastrophic health repercussions," the ministry called on the international community to provide new supplies of vaccines, "to prevent disaster."
The head of the U.N.'s World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, warned over the weekend that that "Gaza's health system is on its knees and collapsing," with only 14 of the territory's 36 hospitals still functioning at all, and supplies dwindling fast. He said the risks were likely to worsen, "with the deteriorating situation and approaching winter conditions."
Along with several other Israeli human rights groups, the B'tselem organization said it had sent a letter to President Biden on Tuesday asking that he use his leverage as leader of Israel's most vital ally to "change Israel's policy and prevent deterioration of the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip."
