President Joe Biden was asking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an a de facto ‘ceasefire’ during a phone call held on Thursday – and threatened a ‘change in U.S. policy towards Israel’ should Tel Aviv decide not to not comply with Washington’s request.
The White House have said the following in their statement:
President Biden spoke by telephone with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The two leaders discussed the situation in Gaza. President Biden emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable. 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. He underscored that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians, and he urged the Prime Minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay to bring the hostages home. The two leaders also discussed public Iranian threats against Israel and the Israeli people. President Biden made clear that the United States strongly supports Israel in the face of those threats.
The White House statement also indicates that there’s a possibility that the U.S. could demand a ceasefire as a precursor for any subsequent agreement to release the remaining 130 plus Israeli hostages held by Hamas, and also that Israel may have to release a meaningful amount of hostages among the 6,000 Palestinians it keeps in its own extensive gulag system of extrajudicial detention centers.
Previously, the U.S. had abstained from UN Security Council Resolution 2728, allowing it to pass, though it said that the resolution – which had apparently decoupled any Israeli hostage release of Israeli hostages from a ceasefire – was “non binding.”
During Thursday’s press briefing, the White House national security spokesperson John Kirby was visibly nervous and stuttered throughout, but clearly stated that unless Israel changed its reckless behaviour that its present relationship with the Biden administration would change – but he was careful not to give any specifics of what that would entail.
This ambiguity has left many suspecting that Kirby was simply hedging for public optics in the wake of Israel’s brutal murder of 7 aid workers from the U.S. State Department’s pet NGO, the World Central Kitchen.
Should Netanyahu choose to carry out another mass-slaughter of Palestinians in Rafah, it may end up doing so without the support of the U.S.
However, no statements by the U.S. mentioned a halt of weapons and arms shipments to the beleaguered regime in Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile, despite all the rhetoric, and the current western outrage over Israel’s murder of western aid workers by the IDF, the Biden administration is still shipping massive stocks of large bombs which Israel intends to use for its ongoing genocide of the native Palestinian population in Gaza.
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