By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the war in Gaza is a “mistake”, U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview published on Tuesday, offering further criticism of Israel’s handling of the conflict.
“I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden said in comments to Univision, a Spanish-language U.S. television network.
Biden has also previously called Israel’s bombing of Gaza “indiscriminate” and its military actions “over the top.”
The White House said last week that the president, in a phone call with Netanyahu, threatened to make US support for Israel’s offensive conditional on taking concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians. That call followed an Israeli airstrike that killed seven staff members of the aid group World Central Kitchen.
“What I ask is that the Israelis simply call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks, total access to all the food and medicine coming into the country,” Biden said in the Tuesday interview.
Israel’s military assault on Gaza has come under growing international criticism. Domestically, Biden has also faced months of protests from anti-war activists, Muslims and Arab Americans across the country, who have called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and restrictions on U.S. military assistance to Israel.
By Israeli counts, the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 killed 1,200 people. According to the local health ministry, Israel’s subsequent military attack on Hamas-ruled Gaza killed more than 33,000 people, displaced nearly all of the 2.3 million inhabitants and led to accusations of genocide that Israel denies. The coastal enclave also suffers from widespread hunger.
Israel has received more foreign aid from the United States than any other country since World War II, although the annual assistance was dwarfed for two years by funding and military equipment sent to Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The United States has traditionally protected Israel in the United Nations Security Council and has vetoed three draft resolutions on the war on Gaza. He abstained last month when the Security Council called for an immediate ceasefire.