WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden issued a stark warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that future U.S. support for Israel's Gaza war depends on the swift implementation of new steps to protect civilians and aid workers.
Biden and Netanyahu's roughly 30-minute call just days after Israeli airstrikes killed seven food aid workers in Gaza added a new layer of complication to the leaders' increasingly strained relationship. Biden's message marks a sharp change in his administration's steadfast support for Israel's war efforts, with the U.S. leader for the first time threatening to rethink his backing if Israel doesn't change its tactics and allow much more humanitarian aid into Gaza.
The White House would not specify what could change about U.S. policy, but it could include altering military sales to Israel and America's diplomatic backup on the world stage. Administration officials said they expected the Israelis to make announcements on next steps within hours or days and that the U.S. would then assess whether the Israeli moves go far enough.
"President Biden emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable," according to a White House summary of the call. "He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers. He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel's immediate action on these steps."
Biden also told Netanyahu that an "immediate cease-fire is essential" and urged Israel to reach such an accord "without delay," according to the White House, which described the conversation as "direct" and "honest."
There was no immediate reaction to the call from the Israeli government.
The leaders' conversation comes as the World Central Kitchen, founded by restaurateur José Andrés to provide immediate food relief to disaster-stricken areas, called for an independent investigation into the Israeli strikes that killed the group's staff members, including an American citizen.
The White House has said the U.S. has no plans to conduct its own investigation even as it called on Israel to do more to prevent the harming of innocent civilians and aid workers as it carries out its operations in Gaza.
BLINKEN, KIRBY BEAR MESSAGE
Separately, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Brussels that U.S. support would be curtailed if Israel doesn't make significant adjustments to how it's carrying out the war.
"If we lose that reverence for human life, we risk becoming indistinguishable from those we confront," Blinken said during a stop at NATO headquarters in Brussels. "Here's the current reality in Gaza despite important steps that Israel has taken to allow assistance into Gaza: The results on the ground are woefully insufficient and unacceptable."
The secretary of state made clear that the Biden administration was now ready to exact a price if Israel continued to resist its counsel. "If we don't see the changes that we need to see, there'll be changes in policy," he said.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby echoed the call for "tangible" and "concrete" changes to be taken by the Israelis beyond reiterating long stated calls for allowing additional aid to get into Gaza.
"If there's no changes to their policy in their approaches, then there's going to have to be changes to ours," Kirby said. "There are things that need to be done. There are too many civilians being killed."
The demands for Israel to bring the conflict to a swift close were increasing across the political spectrum, with former President Donald Trump, the Republicans' presumptive nominee to face Biden this fall, saying Thursday that Israel was "absolutely losing the PR war" and calling for a resolution to the bloodshed.
"Get it over with and let's get back to peace and stop killing people. And that's a very simple statement," Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. "They have to get it done. Get it over with and get it over with fast because we have to -- you have to get back to normalcy and peace."
IRAN UP FOR DISCUSSION
Biden and Netanyahu also discussed Iranian threats against Israel, Kirby said. Earlier this week, Iranian leaders vowed to hit back after an airstrike widely blamed on Israel destroyed Iran's Consulate in Syria, killing 12 people, including two elite Iranian generals. Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said Wednesday the attack "will not remain without answer."
"The two leaders also discussed public Iranian threats against Israel and the Israeli people," the White House's statement said. "President Biden made clear that the United States strongly supports Israel in the face of those threats."
Unlike previous comments, however, the latest White House statement made no mention of Oct. 7 nor the by-now ritual defense of Israel's right to respond to Hamas. Instead, it emphasized that "an immediate cease-fire is essential" and said that Biden "urged the prime minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay to bring the hostages home."
Biden also renewed his concerns about Netanyahu's plan to carry out an operation in the southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, as Israel looks to eliminate Hamas after the militant group's deadly Oct. 7 attack. Vice President Kamala Harris, Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan also joined the call.
Netanyahu did not immediately release a description of his call with Biden, but in other comments on Thursday appeared unbowed. In a meeting in Jerusalem with visiting Republican lawmakers organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, the prime minister pushed back strongly against Biden's longstanding insistence on a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict.
"There is a contrary move, an attempt to force, ram down our throats a Palestinian state, which will be another terror haven, another launching ground for an attempt, as was the Hamas state in Gaza," Netanyahu said. "That is opposed by Israelis, overwhelmingly."
Still, the Biden administration has proceeded apace with arms transfers and deliveries to Israel, many of which were approved years ago but had only been partially or not at all fulfilled. Just this week, on Monday, the Democratic administration's "Daily List" of munitions transfers included the sale to Israel of more than 1,000 500-pound bombs and more than 1,000 1,000-pound bombs.
Officials said those transfers had been approved before the publication of the list on Monday -- the day Israeli airstrikes hit the World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza -- and that they fell below the threshold for new congressional notification. Also, they noted that the bombs are not for delivery to Israel until 2025.
The president has long resisted curbing the arms flow to influence Israel's approach to the war, with aides arguing that many of the munitions sent are air defense missiles. Biden said after Hamas killed 1,200 people and took hundreds of hostages in October that his support for Israel was "rock solid and unwavering." While he has increasingly criticized what he sees as the excesses of the military operation, he has until now stuck by his vow.
But with rising agitation on the political left, particularly in electoral swing states like Michigan, even some of Biden's closest Democratic allies are coming around to the view that Washington should exercise more control over the weaponry, including Sen. Chris Coons, a fellow Democrat from Delaware and confidant of the president.
"I think we're at that point," Coons said on CNN on Thursday morning, that if Netanyahu were to order the Israeli military into the southern Gaza city of Rafah in force and "drop thousand-pound bombs and send in a battalion to go after Hamas and make no provision for civilians or for humanitarian aid, that I would vote to condition aid to Israel."
Some Israel supporters criticized Biden for giving in to pressure from the left, arguing that it could prolong the war by emboldening Israel's enemies. "Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah and the rest of the destroy-Israel axis are sitting back and reveling in the growing tensions and signs of a coming breach between Washington and Jerusalem," said John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon on Thursday said plans to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza to help boost the flow of aid into the territory continue to move forward. Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said the pier will be on line by the end of the month or early May. Biden announced plans to build the floating pier during his State of the Union address last month.
Ryder said Israel has agreed to provide security on the shore as aid is transferred and distributed, but details are still being worked out.
Israel has acknowledged responsibility for the strikes on the World Kitchen workers but said the convoy was not targeted and the workers' deaths were not intentional. The country continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the killings.
Andrés harshly criticized the Israeli military for the strike, and his organization has paused its work in Gaza.
"The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon," he wrote on X. "No more innocent lives lost."
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, is among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. Within two months, researchers say, the offensive already has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria's Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine's Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.
Information for this article was contributed by Aamer Madhani, Zeke Miller, Matthew Lee, Jill Colvin, Lolita C. Baldor, Colleen Long and Chris Megerian of The Associated Press and by Peter Baker of The New York Times.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre listens as White House national security communications adviser John Kirby speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Thursday, April 4, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Israeli soldiers stand next to tanks and other armored vehicles Thursday near the Israeli-Gaza border as seen from southern Israel. (AP/Leo Correa)