WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said Tuesday that pro-Palestinian protesters demanding a cease-fire in the besieged Gaza Strip “have a point” as tensions between him and Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu hit a boiling point.
The president was speaking at a healthcare-focused campaign event in North Carolina when he was interrupted by demonstrators who asked “What about the healthcare in Gaza?”
“Hospitals in Gaza are being bombed,” one protester yelled. Another accused Biden of being “complicit in genocide” while others shouted now-familiar refrains demanding a cease-fire in the coastal enclave.
“Be patient with them,” Biden said, apparently speaking to staff at the event in Raleigh. “They have a point. We need to get a lot more care into Gaza,” the president added to applause from the crowd of supporters.
The comments come amid a deepening diplomatic row between Washington and Tel Aviv after the US did not veto a UN Security Council resolution on Monday that demanded an “immediate cease-fire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable cease-fire.”
It also insisted on the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs.”
Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, followed through on his threat not to send an interagency delegation to Washington to discuss alternatives to a land invasion in southern Gaza’s Rafah if the US did not exercise its veto, cancelling the trip mere hours after the US abstained. Meetings were to take place early this week.
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack led by Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people.
More than 32,400 Palestinians have since been killed in the Palestinian territory, and nearly 74,800 have been injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and Israeli restrictions on the entry of humanitarian assistance have pushed Gaza to the cusp of famine.
Biden has consistently rejected an immediate permanent cease-fire in Gaza, but has been working to broker a halt to the hostilities for some period of time in exchange for the release of all hostages in Hamas captivity. Negotiations remain ongoing, though senior Biden administration officials have said that the talks are progressing.
A US plan to construct a temporary pier on the Gaza coast to facilitate aid deliveries, and circumvent Israeli restrictions at Gaza’s overland border crossings, remains underway, though it is over a month away from fruition as the territory’s humanitarian catastrophe deepens.
