It’s been obvious for a while now that Biden administration has been attempting undermine Israel’s efforts to eliminate Hamas. We know Biden was pushing Israel to hold off their ground invasion of Gaza, but once the invasion began, they’ve been pushing for “humanitarian pauses.”
Despite those efforts, through it all, the Biden administration has publicly expressed unwavering support for Israel. Until now. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken took a more critical tone of the Israeli government and its ground offensive in Gaza.
“Far too many Palestinians have been killed. Far too many have suffered these past weeks,” Blinken said in New Delhi, India. “We want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximize the assistance that gets to them.”
“To that end, we’ll be continuing to discuss with Israel the concrete steps to be taken to advance these objectives,” he added.
From CNN:
Administration officials argue they have had success in some areas as they work to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The White House said Thursday that Israel had agreed to move forward with daily four-hour pauses of military operations in areas of Northern Gaza.
But steady pressure by the Biden administration on Israel to refine its war plans and define its objectives in Gaza has not yielded the level of clarity many US officials want.
To this point, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawing from sources in the Hamas-controlled territory.
The ferocity of the military operation shows no sign of letting up. On Friday, Israeli tanks surrounded a Gaza hospital, its director told CNN, as the territory’s largest healthcare facility came under a reported “bombardment.”
What’s the reason for the sudden shift? There’s no doubt in my mind that the Biden administration is responding to a recent Gallup poll showing that that Biden’s approval ratings took a double-digit dive from within his own party. According to Gallup, Biden’s public support for Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack appeared to be the direct cause.
Related: Joe Biden Is No Friend to Israel
While most Americans support Israel, there is a significant faction within the Democratic Party that aligns itself with the Palestinians—and that wing is exerting significant pressure on him do more for the Palestinians for some time now. But Gallup’s findings made it clear that if Biden continues to anger the pro-Hamas faction of his party, he’ll have a hard time winning support from his party next year, which will making winning almost impossible.
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