President to seek ‘unprecedented package of support for Israel’ and also announces $100m in funding for Gaza and the West Bank
US president Joe Biden boarding Air Force One at Ben Gurion International Airport following his visit to Israel on Wednesday. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFPThe visit of US president Joe Biden to the Middle East on Wednesday – in the midst of a growing conflict – was always going to be something of a gamble. However, the explosion at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, which left hundreds of Palestinians dead, undermined the visit even before Air Force One left Washington.
The Biden administration had hoped, as a centrepiece of its foreign policy, to facilitate an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia which could have reshaped the politics of the Middle East. However the Hamas attacks on Israel earlier this month and the response it generated have left the region in turmoil.
Netanyahu had invited Biden to visit Israel in a conversation last weekend. But confirmation of the trip only came on Monday night after US secretary of state Antony Blinken spent several hours in talks with the Israeli cabinet on a number of key issues, including international aid getting to civilians who are trapped in Gaza.
However the US has also fully backed the Israeli line on the explosion at the hospital in Gaza. Shortly after Biden’s speech in Israel the national security council in Washington gave the US government’s clearest statement on the issue: “While we continue to collect information our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday.
However for many across the Middle East and to some in his own party the main message coming from the president’s visit was that the United States stood with Israel. “Israel, you are not alone”, he said on two occasions. The president also said he would shortly be proposing to the US Congress the provision of “an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defence”.
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