Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered full US backing for Israel in person, on a solidarity visit in which he blamed Islamist militants for a deadly rocket strike on a Gaza hospital and announced the resumption of urgent aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The US president’s whistlestop trip came just hours after Tuesday night’s blast at the Ahli Arab hospital in the Gaza Strip, sparking fury in Arab countries which blame Israel and protests in Muslim countries from Egypt to Pakistan.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for a “day of rage”, after its ally Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, said 471 people were killed in the blast on the hospital compound, where many displaced by Israeli bombing were sheltering.
But European intelligence agencies cast doubt on the death toll. One told AFP: “There wasn’t 200 or even 500 deaths, more likely between 10 and 50.”
The official also backed Biden and the Israelis’ account, who said the strike at the Christian-run hospital was from a malfunctioning Palestinian rocket.
In Tel Aviv, Biden said he was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the blast, but added: “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.”
Israel, Washington’s long-standing key Middle East ally, has blamed the armed Islamic Jihad movement which like Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist group by the United States and other Western governments.
“Based on the information we have seen today it (the blast) appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza,” Biden told a news conference later.
Biden has defended Israel’s right to defend itself, and understood the “all-consuming rage” to hit back at those responsible for the October 7 attacks, which saw Hamas fighters shoot, mutilate or burn to death some 1,400 people.
But he added: “I caution this while you feel that rage: don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice we also made mistakes,” he said.
Israel said afterwards it had agreed to Biden’s request to allow aid into the besieged Gaza Strip via Egypt after mounting concern about dwindling supplies and warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe.
But it said it was limited to “food, water and medicine” and conditional on it not being used by Hamas, added Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
Biden also announced plans for “unprecedented” aid for Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as part of a wider $100 billion package that includes support for Ukraine.
Moments after Biden took off in Air Force One, rocket alerts were activated in central Israel, east of Tel Aviv. Police said rockets fell near the Lebanese border, causing damage but no casualties.
Continuing the conveyor of Western leaders who have visited Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will be in Israel Thursday to seek de-escalation of the conflict, his office said. He will then travel on to Middle Eastern capitals as part of his diplomatic efforts.
– ‘Bloodshed must stop’ –
The horror of the hospital deaths overshadowed Biden’s high-stakes regional visit, with Jordan cancelling a summit between King Abdullah II, Biden, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas, which is holding 199 hostages in the besieged territory, has now claimed the lives of 3,478 people, according to health officials.
Arab countries have almost universally blamed Israel for the hospital strike, either directly or through state media — including Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, which are among the region’s few countries which have diplomatic relations with Israel.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation — a 57-member bloc of Muslim-majority countries — denounced Israel’s backers for granting the country “impunity” in its war with Gaza.
In the besieged enclave, the hospital blast brought new horrors after 12 days of sustained bombardment that Israel says targets Hamas and which has destroyed entire city blocks.
More than a million people have been displaced ahead of an anticipated Israeli ground offensive, according to the UN.
Overnight, after the explosion, AFP reporters saw scores of bodies cloaked in blood-stained sheets and white plastic lined the floors at the nearby the Al-Shifa hospital, where bereaved relatives tried to identify loved ones.
“As I entered the hospital, I heard the explosion. I saw a massive fire,” said Gaza resident Adnan al-Naqa. “The entire square was on fire. There were bodies everywhere, children, women and elderly people.”
“Hospitals are not a target,” said Ghassan Abu Sittah of the charity Doctors Without Borders, who was inside the building when the compound was hit. “This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough.”
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said hundreds died including “internally displaced people seeking safe shelter”.
Hamas has dismissed Israel’s claim of a misfiring rocket, saying its “outrageous lies do not deceive anyone”.
It also slammed the United States, accusing it of being complicit in the ongoing strikes on Gaza.
“The continued endorsement of the Zionist narrative by the US administration makes it complicit in the occupation’s massacres and the Baptist hospital massacre in Gaza,” it said.
– ‘Spiralling out of control’ –
Entire Gaza neighbourhoods have been razed and survivors are left with dwindling supplies of food, water and fuel, unable to flee the 40-kilometre (25-mile) long strip blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007.
“The situation in Gaza is spiralling out of control,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“We need violence on all sides to stop.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and warned Israel against “the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”.
But in New York, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for a “humanitarian pause”, saying it did not respect Israel’s right to defend itself.
On aid, Biden said he was encouraging Netanyahu to ensure “life-saving capacity to help the Palestinians who are innocent and caught in the middle of this”.
Inside Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians who hold US or other foreign passports have desperately hoped to escape through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, the only way in or out of Gaza not controlled by Israel.
The Rafah crossing has remained closed during the war as Israel has struck the Palestinian side, preventing the delivery of aid piled up in long convoys of trucks waiting in Egypt.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths estimated that about 100 trucks per day were needed to meet demand in Gaza.
Egypt’s Sisi has denied that his country was keeping the border closed and warned against any potential Israeli plan to permanently drive Palestinians out of Gaza.
Such a “forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt” would set a precedent for also pushing West Bank Palestinians into Jordan, Sisi said.
The effect, the Egyptian president warned, would be “eradicating the Palestinian cause” and making a future Palestinian state “impossible”.