President Biden is pictured at the White House on October 10, making remarks about the Hamas attack on Israel.
Evan Vucci/AP
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Evan Vucci/AP
President Biden is pictured at the White House on October 10, making remarks about the Hamas attack on Israel.
Evan Vucci/AP
President Biden plans to visit Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, a trip intended to demonstrate full U.S. support for Israel’s response to Hamas attacks. Israel is preparing to launch a ground attack against Hamas in Gaza.
Biden will also travel to Amman on Wednesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a conference call Monday evening. Biden will meet with King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at that stop, Kirby said.
Biden offered his full support to Israel as it still reels from Hamas militants’ brutal attacks on Israeli civilians. More than 1,400 Israelis were killed. The State Department said 30 U.S. citizens were among them and more than a dozen Americans remain missing. U.S. officials said they believed at least some Americans were being held hostage by Hamas.
The Pentagon has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to the region as a deterrent. There is strong concern that the conflict could spread, something Biden and his administration want to avoid.
In an interview with CBS 60 minutes broadcast on Sunday, Biden said he believed it was necessary for Israel to “eliminate the extremists” in Hamas and Hezbollah. But he added that he believed it would be “a grave mistake” for Israel to occupy Gaza.
This week, the White House is expected to send a new funding request to Congress that would include additional military aid for Israel as well as a new request for military and economic aid to Ukraine. The fate of that request is uncertain due to the leadership crisis in the House of Representatives, where Republicans have been unable to choose a presidential candidate capable of securing the 217 votes needed to win a floor vote.
Biden prides himself on his decades of foreign policy experience — and boasts of the coalition he built to support Ukraine in its defense against Russia. In February, he made a surprise visit to Kiev, traveling at night aboard an armored train through the Ukrainian countryside, to declare that the United States would be there to support Ukraine for as long as it took.
Biden is now sending a similar signal with this visit to Israel, another US ally at war over its territorial integrity. But shortages of food, water and medicine in Gaza – and the growing number of civilian casualties from Israeli strikes – are making the situation unstable. Biden has called for a humanitarian corridor to allow aid to enter and civilians to leave Gaza, but those talks have been difficult.
A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll indicates that a majority of Americans want the United States to express strong support for Israel. And Biden did so, winning praise even from critics in Israel and the United States. But the poll doesn’t find Biden getting much political credit for that.