DAILY MAIL
Joe Biden gives Israel ‘private backing’ for ground invasion of Gaza saying he’s ‘fully in support’ of plans to ‘eradicate Hamas’, sources say as defense minister warns ‘it will be a long and difficult war’
- Joe Biden spent seven-and-a-half hours in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, meeting Israeli officials to discuss their response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack
- Biden reportedly told Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the US was ‘fully in support’ of Israel’s plans to launch a ground invasion of Gaza
Joe Biden gave Israel’s leaders U.S. approval to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, according to a report.
Biden spent seven-and-a-half hours in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies.
His visit came as anger spread across the region over an explosion at a Gaza hospital, which Israel blamed on a misfiring Palestinian rocket, and which the Pentagon confirmed. Hamas blames Israel.
The U.S. president told Netanyahu he was ‘fully in support’ of Israel’s plans to invade Gaza to ‘eradicate Hamas‘, according to The Times of London.
Benny Gantz, a former defense minister and IDF chief of staff who has joined his rival Netanyahu’s war cabinet, warned Biden that the incursion could take ‘years,’ Axios reported.
Biden spoke to reporters on his way back from Israel, on Air Force One, but did not confirm the United States’ support for the invasion. The White House has not commented.
Sources told The Times Biden urged Israel to show restraint when it goes in to Gaza, and demanded Israel allow humanitarian aid from Egypt into the devastated enclave.
Biden called Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, from Air Force One as he was flying home to confirm the agreement, and publicly thanked Sisi when he spoke to reporters on the plane.
Sisi ‘deserves a lot of credit’ for allowing in humanitarian aid, Biden said.
‘He was completely cooperative,’ Biden said, adding he ‘stepped up – as did Bibi.’
Twenty trucks full of aid will be allowed to pass from Egypt into Gaza. The shipments will likely begin on Friday, The Times reported, because the road in has been bombed and needs repairs before the trucks can pass.
Biden said the U.N. will be in charge of distributing aid inside Gaza, and there may be a second shipment if the first goes well.
‘If Hamas confiscates them or doesn’t let it get through, then it’s going to end,’ Biden said.
His administration has been taking questions for days about how to provide humanitarian corridors for Palestinian residents of Gaza to flee amid an Israeli evacuation order.
‘We’re going to get people out,’ he said, having discussed the issue with Netanyahu on his trip, as well as getting in humanitarian relief.
‘I was very blunt about the need to get humanitarian aid to Gaza.’
