President Biden appeared to suggest in a recent interview that Israel should “just call for a cease-fire” in Gaza that would last well over a month and not be contingent on hostages being released by Hamas.
“What I’m calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a cease-fire, allow for the next six, eight weeks total access to all food and medicine going into the country,” the 81-year-old president said in an interview with Univision – taped six days ago – that aired Tuesday.
“I’ve spoken with everyone from the Saudis to the Jordanians to the Egyptians,” Biden added.
“They’re prepared to move in. They’re prepared to move this food in. And I think there’s no excuse to not provide for the medical and the food needs of those people. It should be done now.”
Absent from the president’s call for a ceasefire were any demands for concessions from the terror group responsible for last October’s deadly attack on the Jewish state.
A White House official told The Post that Biden was not changing current policy.
“The President was reiterating our longstanding position: we are calling for an immediate ceasefire that would last for at least six weeks as part of a hostage deal,” the official said.
Biden’s demand echoes his recent plea for an “immediate ceasefire” in an April 4 call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A readout of that conversion notes that Biden “urged the Prime Minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay to bring the hostages home.”
In his interview with Univision, however, Biden didn’t explicitly demand the release of the estimated 134 hostages, including five US citizens, being held by Hamas in Gaza in exchange for a cease-fire.
Biden’s conversation with Netanyahu took place days after seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, including an American citizen, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
The president further told Netanyahu that “the overall humanitarian situation” in Gaza is “unacceptable,” and that US policy toward the Israel-Hamas war will be guided by Israel’s actions in the aftermath of its deadly airstrike on the aid convoy.
White House officials have not said what a potential US policy shift toward Israel would look like absent a change in Israel’s approach in Gaza.
Netanyahu has vowed to continue the fight against Hamas until the terror group is eliminated and all hostages are freed.
“No force in the world will stop us. There are many forces trying to do this but it will not help because this enemy, after what it has done, will not do this again. Neither will it exist,” the prime minister said Tuesday at an Israeli Defense Forces base in Tel Hashomer.
“We are committed to doing this, and each one of you now, at this base, will contribute in one way or another to completing the goal,” Netanyahu told new IDF recruits.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claims that more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed since the outbreak of war.
The ministry does not distinguish terrorist deaths from civilian ones.
