U.S. response to the recent Israeli strikes against Hamas: “The president is coming under pressure from his own family,” he told the first lady

The president is coming under pressure, even from his own family. On Tuesday evening, the first lady told Mr. Biden to “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” he told the Muslim community leaders.

The statement was the sharpest issued by the White House in the six months of Israel’s war against Hamas, underscoring the president’s growing frustration with Mr. Netanyahu, who has defied American pressure to do more to reduce the suffering of civilians in Gaza. Mr. Biden spoke out against the killing of the aid workers by the Israeli military.

The Israelis have not yet given any initial findings of their investigation into the strike to the United States according to a senior Biden administration official who is familiar with internal conversations.

The Gaza Crisis: A Call for Action against Israel in the Light of the Israel Defense Forces, and a Palestinian-Mexican Counterattack

Zomi Frankcom and Damian Sobl were in Gaza to feed Palestinians and documented their efforts in social media videos. Then on April 1, they were killed by Israeli airstrikes, along with five other colleagues, bringing the work of the World Central Kitchen in Gaza to a halt. The charity’s videos offer a rare window into the challenges of food distribution in Gaza, a territory on the brink of famine that’s been cut off from the outside world. The World Central Kitchen was started in 2010 in honor of the earthquake in Haiti. The organization brings meals to areas impacted by natural disasters or conflict, including communities displaced inside Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks. Since October, the group said it delivered more than 43 million meals to Palestinians through community kitchens, truck convoys and airdrops. They delivered aid by sea in March with nearly 200 tons of food from Cyprus. The Israeli military released footage of the coordination behind that effort, which brought food to northern Gaza, where the U.N. says people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger. I think we can bring millions and millions of meals a day. We can fail, but the greatest failure will be not trying. A second maritime delivery arrived just hours before the attack. In a video statement, the Israeli military called the attack a grave mistake. According to the UN, nearly 200 aid workers have been killed in Gaza. The operations at the World Central Kitchen are currently suspended.

The president’s threat to condition American support on Israeli conduct came under rising pressure from his own party. Some of former President Barack Obama’s old team have grown more outspoken in castigating Mr. Biden for not doing more to restrain Mr. Netanyahu, who goes by the nickname Bibi, and the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F., saying that the president’s expressed outrage was meaningless otherwise.

The White House said Biden stood by Israel against Iran during his call with Netanyahu and that other members of the national security adviser’s team joined in.

He said that they’ll know how to defend themselves, and that they’ll attack anyone who plans to attack them.

In a separate video statement, he focused on the threat he sees from Iran. “For years Iran has been acting against us, both directly and though its proxies, and therefore Israel is acting against Iran and its proxies, in both defensive and offensive operations,” he said, referring to an Israeli airstrike that killed seven Iranian military officers in Syria this week.

There is a plan to try to force a Palestinian state down our throats, as was done with the Hamas state in Gaza. “That is opposed by Israelis, overwhelmingly.”

In regards to the call, Mr. Netanyahu did not give a description but in other statements on Thursday he seemed unbowed. The prime minister clashed with Mr. Biden in Jerusalem about his stance on the two-state solution to the Palestine conflict.

“I think we’re at that point,” Mr. Coons said on CNN on Thursday morning, adding that if Mr. Netanyahu were to order the Israeli military into the southern Gaza city of Rafah in force and “drop thousand-pound bombs and send in a battalion to go after Hamas and make no provision for civilians or for humanitarian aid, that I would vote to condition aid to Israel.”

During an evidently tense 30-minute call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Biden went further than ever before in pressing for change in the military operation that has inflamed many Americans and others around the world. The White House didn’t say the president would stop arms supplies or impose conditions for their use, but they did say he would.

John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said the president wants to see “concrete tangible steps” to reduce the violence against civilians and increase access for humanitarian aid to Gaza. He told us that the White House expected specific changes from Israel within hours or days.

He made it clear that the U.S. policy on Gaza would be determined by Israel’s actions. The White House said that he urged the prime minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay and that he underscored the need for an immediate ceasefire.

Israel did not provide an immediate response to the White House’s readout of the conversation, but on Wednesday, an Israeli official blamed the impasse in the cease-fire talks on the U.S. decision to allow a U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution to pass on March 25.

The official told the U.S. media that the US move had hurt the progress of the negotiations with Hamas. He spoke on the condition that he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The U.S. said at the time that vote did not indicate a policy shift, and National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that the administration was “perplexed” by Israel’s apparent outrage.

Negotiators had been working toward a temporary cease-fire that would take effect during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in exchange for the release of hostages. Just a week away, the holy month of Ramadan comes to an end.

The president said that he would not accept changes to the protection of civilians on the ground, changes in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into the country, or a cease-fire that would allow hostages to get out.