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WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday for the first time since an Israeli military attack killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers earlier this week.
The call lasted about 30 minutes, a senior Biden administration official said.
A U.S. official said ahead of the call that Biden intended to express his anger over the incident to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the call.
Another U.S. official said the phone call between the two leaders was arranged after the attack occurred and that Biden was “very angry” about the incident.
The president’s anger is that “the details of the disengagement from the World Central Kitchen are either not being conveyed to the Israeli military, or they are being ignored and ignored,” and “I don’t know how the Israelis are carrying out the operation.” “It points to a broader question of whether or not there are any cases of COVID-19,” the official said. .
Vice President Kamala Harris was also expected to participate in the conference call, but will likely participate remotely as she will visit North Carolina on Thursday.
Chef José Andres’ World Central Kitchen said the seven workers killed in Monday’s strike included a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. The White House announced Tuesday that Biden called Andres and “expressed his heartbreak” over their deaths.
Israel has said it does not intend to target or kill humanitarian aid workers, but the charity said it was coordinating actions with the Israel Defense Forces and moving vehicles, including two armored vehicles, through “non-conflict areas”. He said he is doing so. Contains the World Central Kitchen logo.
Following the attack, the nonprofit organization announced it had immediately ceased operations in the area.
Biden and Netanyahu last spoke by phone on March 18. In that call, Biden warned Israeli leaders not to authorize military operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Senior U.S. and Israeli officials held a virtual meeting Monday to discuss Israeli plans for a possible ground invasion of the city, as the U.S. side pushed back on an Israeli proposal to evacuate Palestinian civilians to Palestine. Two U.S. officials and an acquaintance of a former U.S. official convened a virtual meeting to discuss the matter. was said at the meeting.
Israel has proposed moving Rafah’s 1.4 million civilians into tents north of the city, but the plan does not include sanitation, meeting food and water needs, or procuring most of the tents. officials said.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware), a close ally of Mr. Biden, said Thursday that if Israel decides to enter Rafah without provisions for civilian protection or humanitarian assistance, the U.S. For the first time, he expressed support for attaching conditions to aid. . “I think we’re getting to that point,” he said in an interview with CNN.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vermont) said in a statement Thursday that the United States should stop funding Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
The Biden administration has a “Netanyahu that has so unjustly killed civilians, aid workers, and medical workers, uses food as a weapon, and has no vision for establishing a viable independent Palestinian state alongside a Palestinian state.” “The state of Israel is responsible for defunding the regime’s strategy,” he said.
Meanwhile, Biden met with members of the Muslim community at the White House on Tuesday. One of the participants, Salima Suswell, founder of the Black Muslim Leadership Council, told NBC News that the president has told the group that First Lady Jill Biden has privately urged the group to end the war between Israel and Hamas. He said he told them he was suing.
Biden made the remarks after a doctor treating injured people in the Gaza Strip told the president that his wife did not want him to attend the meeting. Biden said he can relate and that the first lady told him to “stop, stop now,” Sadswell said. The comment was first reported by the New York Times.
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