Later Tuesday, however, Biden appeared to walk back those remarks after a reporter asked him whether Netanyahu was “playing politics” with the war.
“I don’t think so,” Biden responded. “He’s trying to work out the serious problem that he has.”
The episode was the latest evidence of the strained relations between Biden and Netanyahu. Biden presented what he called an Israeli proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza on Friday, but Netanyahu has since publicly distanced himself from the deal, which his right-wing coalition partners have said would prompt them to bring down the government.
More broadly, there was little evidence of a shift in the Biden administration’s Israel policy.
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Israel signed an agreement Tuesday with the United States to add a third squadron of F-35 warplanes to the Israeli air force. The delivery will begin in 2028, but the timing of the agreement was notable as Biden seeks to pressure Israel to wind down its war in Gaza.
The inking of the agreement amid the current situation in Gaza “demonstrates how deeply unserious the Biden administration is about applying the meaningful pressure to Israel to end its operations in Gaza,” said Josh Paul, a former State Department official who worked on arms transfers and who resigned in protest over Biden’s Gaza policy last year.
Within Israel, an announcement Monday evening that four hostages had been confirmed dead in the Gaza Strip has added pressure on Netanyahu’s government to adopt the cease-fire deal with Hamas and bring back alive those still in captivity.
The four hostages were killed several months ago in the Khan Younis area in Gaza “during our operation there against Hamas,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a briefing.
Netanyahu said he was working “in countless ways” to bring back hostages. “I think about them constantly, about their families and about their suffering,” he said in a statement. But he emphasized that the elimination of Hamas was still the priority, despite fears for the hostages’ lives.
Majed Al-Ansari, spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry of Qatar, a mediator in the cease-fire talks, said Tuesday that “we are waiting for a clear Israeli position that represents the entire government in response” to the proposal announced by Biden on Friday.
Al-Ansari said Qatar has “delivered the proposal to the Hamas side” and that “the paper is now much closer in positions of both sides. We are now using our best efforts to finalize an agreement.”
But, he added that neither side had issued a statement that “gives us a lot of confidence.”
Hamas official Suhail Hindi told The Washington Post that the plan presented publicly by Biden last week remains under discussion by the group.
Fallout from the hostages’ deaths dominated Israel’s front pages Tuesday, as leading columnists argued that more should have been done to save the four men.
“Their deaths are not the result of a ‘missed opportunity.’ They are the results of failed, appalling, negligent administration; of bombastic talk,” wrote Nadav Eyal in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily. “These conclusions will no longer help the grandfathers of Nir Oz and the uncle from Nirim. They died, down in that tunnel, waiting for the IDF that never came.”
Monday’s announcements mean that more than a third of the hostages still being held in Gaza — 43 of the 124 — are now confirmed dead, by the prime minister’s office’s own tally. The number includes four hostages from 2014, two of whom are confirmed dead.
The news came amid a flurry of confused messaging regarding the proposal for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. On Monday, Netanyahu told a parliamentary committee that any “claims that we have agreed to a cease-fire without our conditions being met are incorrect.”
The stalemate in discussions has fanned anger and dissent inside Netanyahu’s government. Far-right members of his coalition have threatened to quit and bring down the government if the deal presented by Biden is accepted. The Shas faction of Israel’s Knesset, meanwhile, said it has decided to “fully support the Israeli proposal.” The religious faction, part of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, said it wants to “bring the deal to completion.”
The main point of contention remaining is how and when the war will formally end. Israel has insisted that it will accept no option that would ensure the survival of Hamas. Hamas has said it requires a permanent cease-fire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned of the dangers of any additional delays in releasing hostages. “With every day that passes, more and more hostages die in captivity,” it said in a post on X. “This loss of human life is not inevitable. All hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally.”
An Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander was killed in an Israeli strike in Syria on Monday, according to Iranian media reports. The strike marks the first apparent Israeli attack on Iranian interests since an Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus in April. That strike triggered Iran’s massive retaliatory attack against Israel, an escalation that threatened to further destabilize the region. The Iranian commander killed in Syria on Monday was identified as Saeed Abiyar, an adviser to Syrian forces allied with Iran, according to state-run Tasnim media.
The risk of famine has increased as Israel makes Gaza “aid response virtually impossible,” said British antipoverty group Oxfam on Monday. Two-thirds of the population is now squeezed in less than a fifth of the strip, Oxfam said, adding that Israel’s “relentless air and land bombardment and deliberate obstruction of the humanitarian response is making it virtually impossible for aid agencies to reach trapped, starved civilians in Gaza.”
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said critical desalination plants have shut down due to a lack of fuel. “People don’t have near enough water,” the agency said in a post on X. “Families & children walk long distances in the heat for water.” It emphasized that Israeli authorities must provide access “NOW.”
At least 36,550 people have been killed and 82,959 injured in Gaza since the war started, said the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 287 soldiers have been killed since the launch of its military operations in Gaza.
John Hudson, Karen DeYoung, Susannah George, Hajar Harb, Lior Soroka and Hazem Balousha contributed to this report.
