Call for an immediate ceasefire
Biden sets Netanyahu a condition for further US support
April 4, 2024, 7:58 p.m
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US President Biden finds much harsher words for criticizing Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. For the first time, he threatens Prime Minister Netanyahu that he will stop US support for the Israeli government if it does not protect Palestinian civilians.
US President Joe Biden has called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take “concrete” and “immediate” measures to protect civilians in the Gaza war. The further US course in the conflict depends on Israel’s “immediate action” to protect civilians and humanitarian aid workers in the Gaza Strip, Biden said in a telephone call with Netanyahu on Thursday, according to the White House.
It was the first conversation between the two politicians since the death of seven employees of the aid organization World Central Kitchen (WCK) in an Israeli air strike, about which the US President was “outraged”. In a conversation with the Israeli head of government, Biden called the attacks on humanitarian workers and the general humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory “unacceptable,” the White House said.
Israel must take “a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps” to prevent harm to civilians, reduce human suffering and ensure the safety of aid workers, the US president said.
Tens of thousands of people killed in Gaza
At the same time, Biden again called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. According to the information, Biden also urged that Netanyahu authorize his negotiators “without delay” to conclude an agreement on the release of the hostages kidnapped by the militant Palestinian organization Hamas.
“Despite important steps that Israel has taken to enable aid in the Gaza Strip, the results on the ground are completely inadequate and unacceptable,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Brussels. There is currently no higher priority than protecting the civilian population and expanding humanitarian aid, emphasized Blinken. “The horrific attack on World Central Kitchen this week was not the first such incident,” Blinken said. “It has to be the last one.”
Biden has so far consistently supported Israel in the war against the radical Islamic Hamas, including with arms deliveries. However, the US President has recently been increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct of the war in view of the humanitarian emergency in the Gaza Strip.
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented major attack on Israel on October 7th, in which, according to Israeli information, around 1,170 people were killed and around 250 others were kidnapped as hostages in the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israel has taken massive military action in the Gaza Strip. According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, which cannot be independently verified, more than 33,000 people have been killed so far.