Biden and 17 other world leaders turn up the heat on Hamas to free hostages.
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President Biden and the leaders of 17 other nations called on Hamas on Thursday to release all of the hostages seized during its Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, an effort to raise international pressure on the group’s leader in Gaza to agree to a U.S.-brokered deal.
“The fate of the hostages and the civilian population in Gaza, who are protected under international law, is of international concern,” the leaders said in a joint statement organized and released by the White House, noting that the more than 130 hostages remaining in Gaza include citizens of their countries.
The statement was released a day after Mr. Biden met at the White House with Avigail Idan, a 4-year-old dual citizen of Israel and the United States whose parents were killed in the Oct. 7 attack and who was held captive in Gaza for several weeks before being released in an early hostage deal. The president spent an hour with her family as Avigail, whose name has also been spelled Abigail Edan in some American media, played in the Oval Office, crawling through the Resolute Desk in the same way that John F. Kennedy Jr. famously did as a toddler.
It also came a day after Hamas publicly released a video showing Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American hostage who was grievously injured during the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people. It was the first time he had been shown alive since being taken captive. The White House received a copy of the video on Monday and Hamas posted it online on Wednesday.
It remains unknown how many of the hostages are still alive. A senior Hamas official said earlier this month that Hamas did not have 40 living hostages in Gaza who met the criteria for an exchange under a proposed cease-fire agreement.
The United States has proposed a deal through Egyptian and Qatari intermediaries in which Hamas would release 40 of the most vulnerable hostages in exchange for a six-week cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. A senior administration official who briefed reporters on Thursday on condition of anonymity under official ground rules put the blame solely on Hamas for blocking the deal.
The official said that while Israel had signaled it would go along with the deal, the response that came back from Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader hiding underground in Gaza, was “totally nonconstructive.” Since then, the official said, Hamas has sent signals that it does not mean to completely reject the deal and is willing to sit down again. The official said the United States and its partners would test that proposition in coming days.
The joint statement seemed meant to counter the perception that the world is entirely against Israel and to send the message that Hamas is the impediment to ending the war in Gaza.
“We strongly support the ongoing mediation efforts in order to bring our people home,” the statement said. “We reiterate our call on Hamas to release the hostages, and let us end this crisis so that collectively we can focus our efforts on bringing peace and stability to the region.”
In addition to the United States, the countries that signed on included Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain and Thailand.
— Peter Baker Reporting from Washington
A floating pier would move aid from ships into Gaza.
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Army engineers on Thursday began construction of a floating pier and causeway for humanitarian aid off the coast of Gaza, which, when completed, could help relief workers deliver as many as two million meals a day for the enclave’s residents, Defense Department officials said.
The construction on the “initial stages of the temporary pier and causeway at sea” means that the project’s timing is in line with what Pentagon officials had predicted, Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Defense Department’s press secretary, said. The construction is meant to allow humanitarian aid to bypass Israeli restrictions on land convoys into the besieged strip.
General Ryder said that defense officials expected the project, ordered up by President Biden early last month, to be completed early next month. The facility is meant to include an offshore platform to transfer aid from ships, and a floating pier to bring the aid to shore.
Aid organizations have welcomed the plan, which will be an addition to the airdrops of humanitarian supplies that the U.S. military has been conducting over Gaza. But aid workers say, and defense officials have acknowledged, that the maritime project is not an adequate substitute for land convoys. Such aid convoys fell sharply when the war began more than six months ago and have only partly recovered.
Some U.S. military officials have also privately expressed security concerns about the project, and General Ryder said that the military was looking into a mortar attack on Wednesday that caused minimal damage in the area where some pier work is supposed to be done. However, he said, U.S. forces had not started moving anything into the area at the time of the mortar attacks.
The floating pier is being built alongside an Army ship off the Gaza coast. Army ships are large, lumbering vessels, so they have armed escorts, particularly as they get within range of Gaza’s coast, defense officials have said.
The United Nations says famine is likely to set in within Gaza by the end of May.
Aid workers have described bottlenecks for aid at border crossings because of lengthy inspections of trucks, limited crossing hours and protests by Israelis, and they have highlighted the difficulty of distributing aid inside Gaza. Israeli officials have denied that they are hampering the flow of aid, saying the United Nations and aid groups are responsible for any backlogs.
Senior Biden administration and military officials detailed a complex plan in a Pentagon call with reporters on Thursday afternoon, explaining how the pier and causeway are being put together, and how it is supposed to work. Army engineers are constructing the facility aboard Navy ships in the eastern Mediterranean. One official said that the “at-sea assembly of key pieces” of the pier began on Thursday.
Biden officials are insistent that the Pentagon can carry out aid deliveries through the floating pier without putting American boots on the ground in Gaza. Officials described a complicated shuttle system, through which aid would be loaded onto Navy ships in Cyprus and transported to a causeway — a floating platform — at sea.
The Pentagon’s military acronym for the project is J-Lots, for Joint Logistics Over the Shore.
The causeway at sea is different from the floating pier where the aid will be offloaded into Gaza. An engineering unit with the Israeli military will anchor the floating pier to the Gaza shore, a senior military official told reporters in the Pentagon call.
Shuttle boats run by aid organizations, the United Nations or other countries are then expected to transport the aid to the floating pier, where it is to be loaded onto trucks driven by “a third party,” the official said. He declined to identify the third party.
The official said that Israel was dedicating a brigade to provide security for the American troops and aid workers working on the pier.
The operation is expected to bring in enough aid for around 90 trucks a day, a number that will increase to 150 trucks a day when the system reaches full operating capacity, the official said.
— Helene Cooper reporting from Washington
Israel’s claim of killing ‘half’ of Hezbollah’s commanders in southern Lebanon draws skepticism.
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Israel’s defense minister has said that the country’s military has eliminated half of Hezbollah’s commanders in southern Lebanon. But analysts doubt whether Israel’s increasing use of targeted killings would weaken the militant group.
Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon and is Iran’s most powerful regional proxy, has had intense cross-border clashes with Israeli forces ever since the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. With little sign of the conflict abating and with diplomatic talks yet to result in a cease-fire, Israel has in recent months begun killing Hezbollah fighters in targeted strikes, reflecting an apparent shift in military strategy.
“Half of the Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon have been eliminated,” Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said during a visit on Wednesday to Israeli troops along the northern border with Lebanon. “The other half are in hiding,” he added, without providing a specific number or evidence of his claim.
A Hezbollah official and a senior Lebanese intelligence official, both of whom spoke anonymously to discuss the sensitive subject, denied Mr. Gallant’s numbers on Thursday.
Some experts expressed skepticism about whether Israel’s targeted killings could achieve its goal of pushing Hezbollah north of the Litani River in Lebanon, thereby preventing cross-border attacks and allowing the tens of thousands Israeli civilians displaced by the fighting to return.
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“It is psychological warfare,” said Kassem Kassir, a Lebanese political analyst and expert on Hezbollah who is close to the group. He added that Mr. Gallant’s statement was a means “to convince the Israeli audience that the army is achieving its goals.”
In reality, Mr. Kassir said, out of 100,000 Hezbollah fighters, no more than 20 of the roughly 270 members that the group has acknowledged have been killed were commanders.
Mr. Gallant’s comments, analysts said, reflected a growing unanimity among Israeli officials that Hezbollah poses the clearest threat on its borders. On Sunday, Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s emergency war cabinet, declared that Israel’s border with Lebanon constituted its “greatest and most urgent challenge.”
Publicly, the Israeli military has named nine Hezbollah fighters whom it has eliminated and described as “commanders” on the Telegram messaging app since Oct. 7. Some were described as senior figures in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, and others were said to have been involved in the group’s drone operations. The claims could not be independently verified.
“They need this veneer of success, and so are highly publicizing these assassinations,” said Amal Saad, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Cardiff University in Wales who researches Hezbollah. “It is compensation for lack of any military achievement,” she added.
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Hezbollah seldom releases details about the ranks of its slain fighters, often denying the Israeli military’s claims about their roles. Analysts say, however, that the group’s responses to targeted strikes are often indicative of the significance of the fighters killed.
Rym Momtaz, a Paris-based research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who specializes in the Middle East, said: “Israel has killed a few of their commanders in their south. That is not something they have denied, and of course this is an issue, but Gallant is overstating and exaggerating here.”
Another analyst noted that wartime estimates of battlefield tolls could be suspect. “All parties probably have a vested interest in showing that they’re doing great and minimizing their losses,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization.
Hezbollah has lost a significant number of fighters and commanders during the war with Israel, Mr. Levitt said. But “the reality is that Hezbollah has a deep bench,” he said.
Elias Hanna, a military analyst and former brigadier general in the Lebanese Army, said that regardless of how many of Hezbollah’s commanders have been killed, Israel’s pivot to targeted assassinations “would not affect” Hezbollah’s “modus operandi.” He added, “It’s a war of attrition and positional warfare.”
After airstrikes killed what Israel described as two Hezbollah commanders, the militant group claimed responsibility for a drone and missile attack in northern Israel last week that killed one soldier and wounded 16 other soldiers and two civilians. It was one of Hezbollah’s most damaging attacks in Israel in recent months.
Johnatan Reiss and Anushka Patil contributed reporting.
— Euan Ward and Hwaida Saad Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
A U.N. aid chief says ‘every day counts’ in the efforts to relieve the suffering in Gaza.
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The U.N.’s top coordinator for humanitarian aid for Gaza has said that Israel has taken steps to improve the delivery of relief supplies to the enclave but warned that much more must be done to meet the vast need there.
Israel has announced efforts to increase the flow of aid into Gaza, including by opening an additional border crossing and by accepting shipments at a nearby port. But the United Nations has warned with increasing urgency that a famine is looming and that deliveries still fall short of the level needed to stop the spread of starvation.
The aid coordinator, Sigrid Kaag, said in a briefing at the Security Council on Wednesday that, while Israel had made efforts to increase the entry and distribution of aid, “further definitive and urgent steps are needed to set the course for a sustained flow of humanitarian and commercial goods into Gaza in terms of volume, need and reach.”
“Given the scale and scope of destruction and the extent of human suffering, every day counts,” she added.
According to U.N. data, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza has risen, but only slightly. In the two weeks ending Monday, the most recent day for which figures were available, an average of 195 trucks had entered Gaza each day through the two main crossings in the south of the territory.
That was slightly higher than the average of 185 trucks daily in the two weeks before that — but still far short of the 300 trucks of food that the World Food Program estimates are needed per day to begin to meet people’s basic needs.
Ms. Kaag, a Dutch former finance minister and deputy prime minister, was appointed by the United Nations in December to improve efforts to get aid into Gaza. The role was laid out in a Security Council resolution that aimed to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which has been under intense Israeli bombardment since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.
Countries including the United States have tried to find air and sea routes into Gaza, but aid groups say delivery by truck would be far more efficient. They have described deep the challenges in navigating Israeli security checkpoints and in traveling through a war zone, including impassable roads, unexploded ordnance and fuel shortages. Israel has denied restricting aid, blaming U.N. agencies for bureaucratic delays.
Ms. Kaag said that the United Nations was in contact with the Israeli government on urgent measures needed to improve the flow of aid, including easing procedures at Israeli checkpoints, repairing roads and allowing humanitarian convoys to move as scheduled.
Ms. Kaag’s comments echoed those of President Biden’s special envoy for humanitarian issues in Gaza, David Satterfield, who said on Tuesday that the volume of aid into Gaza had increased but that “much more aid is needed.”
— Matt Surman
Problems with the Israeli military’s deconfliction system existed before a deadly strike on an aid convoy.
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‘We’re Aware of the Location’: Aid Groups in Gaza Coordinated With I.D.F. but Still Came Under Fire
Visual evidence and internal communications obtained by The Times show six aid groups based in Western countries, including Israel’s strongest allies, had humanitarian sites hit by Israeli strikes, even after the locations were shared with the I.D.F.
[MUSIC PLAYING] On April 1, an Israeli drone targeted a convoy of white cars, killing seven World Central Kitchen workers. The group, based in Washington, D.C., had coordinated the convoy’s route with the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F. “We were doing the right protocols. We were engaging with the I.D.F. in the way we all should be doing. Like every minute, everybody knew where everybody was.” This process is called deconfliction, a wartime safety system aid groups use around the world to help combatants compile a list of humanitarian locations in order to avoid accidental attacks. - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] More than 200 aid workers have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the United Nations. In the case of the World Central Kitchen, or W.C.K., the I.D.F. called the strike a grave mistake that can happen when fighting an enemy that embeds in the civilian population. “The W.C.K. coordinated everything correctly with the I.D.F. in advance. This operational misidentification and misclassification was the result of internal failures.” But these internal failures were not new. Using visual evidence and internal communications obtained by The Times, we examined strikes on six aid group operations that came under Israeli fire despite using the I.D.F.’s deconfliction system. These humanitarian organizations have a direct line to the Israeli military, and come from Western countries, including Israel’s strongest allies. Some of their operations were clearly marked. “Our flag. We identify it.” Or located in a special area Israel says is safe for civilians. It’s not clear whether the I.D.F. failed to alert their targeting teams about the presence of civilians, or if they decided eliminating a target was more important. But the pattern of attacks shows that in Israel’s battle against Hamas, not even the places with every available avenue of protection are safe from I.D.F. strikes. Israel has said that it has deconflicted thousands of humanitarian convoys successfully. In response to questions from The Times, the I.D.F. said it has been targeting military targets in order to dismantle Hamas, but is committed to all international legal obligations, and has put in place detailed regulations for dealing with sensitive sites. Weeks before the World Central Kitchen strike, a logistics coordinator for another American aid group called ANERA returned home after distributing supplies. Mousa Shawa was still wearing his ANERA vest when an Israeli strike hit the house, killing him; his 6-year-old son, Kareem; and several neighbors. - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Mousa had worked at ANERA for 13 years and felt grateful to have a job that would keep his family safe, his wife, Dua, told The Times. - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] ANERA shared emails with The Times showing they’d repeatedly sent the I.D.F. coordinates and photos of their staff shelters, including the two-story residential building where Mousa’s family and others had been living since the war began. Israeli officials confirmed the location was being processed in their system. On March 4, in response to a request from the I.D.F., ANERA sent this email to ensure their warehouses and shelters, including Mousa’s, were still registered in Israel’s deconfliction system. But just four days later, the house was blown apart. Visual evidence shows it was a surgical strike in a dense cluster of houses. All were left essentially untouched, but one, which had only the top floor destroyed. Munitions experts told The Times this kind of targeted damage points to a precision Israeli air-dropped bomb. - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] In a statement to The Times, the I.D.F. said it targeted a Hamas terrorist who participated in the October 7 attack, and expects military investigators to examine the strike. ANERA said they’ve received, quote, “No information about who or what may have been targeted, or why,” and want an independent investigation into how a location repeatedly deconflicted with the I.D.F. came under attack. Before the strike on Mousa’s house, Doctors Without Borders said two staff shelters registered with Israel’s deconfliction system came under fire without warning or official explanation. “We’ve seen tracers going towards the sea.” At this shelter on January 8, the aid group said a projectile was fired through the building, killing a 5-year-old girl. - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Photographs show the remnants of an Israeli tank shell lying outside. In February at a different Doctors Without Borders staff shelter, two family members were killed when incoming fire set off an explosion. Seven others, mostly women and children, were injured. Visuals of the aftermath show a large Doctors Without Borders flag clearly marked the building. The entry point of the munition and the damage left behind suggests a medium- to large-caliber weapon, experts said. According to the aid group, it was an Israeli tank shell. The I.D.F. previously told British broadcaster Sky News they fired because they had identified, quote, “Terror activity at the building.” In a statement to The Times, the I.D.F. denied striking the first shelter on January 8 and said the second incident will be reviewed by military investigators. Doctors Without Borders refuted any allegations of terror activity in their facilities, and said the attacks on civilian spaces show that nowhere in Gaza is safe. What went wrong in the deconfliction system is still not clear to the aid group. “This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence.” The very same questions would be raised in the British Parliament after another strike, which was examined by The Times. On the morning of January 18, this building was rocked by a giant explosion. A bomb landed on the wall around the compound, which was being used to house medical staff from the International Rescue Committee, based in the U.S., and the U.K. group Medical Aid for Palestinians, whose logo is visible on bedding and luggage in the wreckage. Several people were injured. Six medical workers were withdrawn from Gaza. Text messages between aid staff and an I.D.F. official reviewed by The Times show that a month before the attack, the Israeli military was aware of the compound’s location. When the aid worker asks, “So we can bring them to this chalet? It is still safe?” The I.D.F. response is, “Yes.” The compound had two additional layers of protection. British officials, The Times confirmed, used high-level diplomatic channels to ensure the compound was deconflicted. And it was located in the neighborhood that Israel has repeatedly designated as the humanitarian zone, safe for civilians. In a U.N. report reviewed by The Times, investigators indicated the crater and munition debris most likely point to an MK 83, which is a 1,000-pound bomb made in the U.S. “Strikes still took place. So —” British lawmakers demanded answers. “What investigation is being conducted? What has been the response of the I.D.F. to this? Has H.M.G. seen the targeting permissions for that airstrike?” After weeks of high-level pressure — “It was raised by the foreign secretary in his meetings in Israel last week.” Israel provided six different, and often conflicting, explanations, according to the aid groups. Sometimes Israel said they were “not operating in that area.” Other times, they claimed their bomb was attempting to hit a target adjacent to the compound. They also said what struck the compound wasn’t actually a bomb, but a “piece of aircraft fuselage.” The I.D.F. told The Times they did not strike the location at all on January 18. After the strike on the World Central Kitchen convoy, which unleashed global outrage, Israel’s response was much more swift and clear. Israeli officials launched a new humanitarian coordination cell, fired commanders and opened new aid access points. But after months of Israel’s war against Hamas — - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] questions remain about to what extent the I.D.F. will hold their fire in places where aid workers or civilians are present.
Using visual evidence and internal communications, The Times looked at six aid groups whose operations or shelters came under Israeli fire despite using the Israel Defense Forces’ deconfliction system to notify the military of their locations.
These humanitarian organizations have a direct line to the I.D.F. and come from Western countries, including Israel’s strongest allies. Some of the locations struck had been clearly marked or located in a special humanitarian zone that Israel said was safe for civilians.
The pattern indicates that in Israel’s battle against Hamas, not even the places with every available avenue of protection are safe from I.D.F. strikes.
— Haley Willis,Robin Stein,Ainara Tiefenthäler,Natalie Reneau,Aaron Byrd and Anushka Patil
José Andrés, founder of the World Central Kitchen, eulogizes 7 aid workers killed in Gaza.
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A stone pulpit in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., is no place the chef José Andrés expected to be when he created the food charity World Central Kitchen nearly 15 years ago.
But on Thursday there he stood, eulogizing seven of the organization’s workers who were killed in the Gaza Strip while trying to carry out a singular mission: bringing food into a region of 2.2 million people facing a growing humanitarian crisis.
“They risked everything to feed people they did not know and will never meet,” Mr. Andrés said. “They were the best of humanity.”
The seven workers were killed on April 1 after they helped unload a barge of food aid in northern Gaza and were heading to Rafah, a city in the south. Their well-marked convoy of vehicles was hit by armed Israeli drones. Israeli military officials said the attack was a serious mistake that should not have happened. They cited a series of failures, including a breakdown in communication and violations of the military’s own rules of engagement.
Mr. Andrés, unusually subdued and occasionally tearful, said he was consumed with regret, sorrow and anger over the deaths. “I know there are also many questions about why World Central Kitchen was in Gaza,” he said. “We ask ourselves the same questions day and night.”
But the workers took the risk, he said, because they believed that showing up and feeding people in their darkest hours would let them know they were not alone.
“Food is a universal human right,” Mr. Andrés said. “Feeding each other, cooking and eating together is what makes us human. The dishes we cook and deliver are not just ingredients, or calories. A plate of food is a plate of hope.”
— Kim Severson Reporting from Washington
The White House says it won’t interfere in a decision over an Israeli battalion accused of abuse.
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The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, declined to say on Wednesday whether the Biden administration will sever U.S. aid to an Israeli military unit accused of human rights abuses, saying the matter was for the State Department to decide and that the White House would not intervene.
The State Department is weighing action against the Israeli military battalion, Netzah Yehuda, under a U.S. law that bars American equipment, funds and training from going to foreign military units found to have committed gross human rights violations. “The State Department will make these judgments,” Mr. Sullivan said at a White House news conference.
State Department officials declined to comment on the matter.
The unit has been investigated in Israel for crimes in the West Bank predating the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks against Israel. Following reports that the State Department might recommend it be denied U.S. military aid, Israeli officials have pressed the U.S. government not to cut off aid to the battalion in what would be the first action of its kind by the Biden administration.
Netzah Yehuda was established for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men whose strict religious observance demands that men and women be separated. The battalion has attracted other Orthodox soldiers as well, including hard-line nationalists from the West Bank settler movement.
Asked about the matter by reporters on Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken declined to address specifics but said, “I think you’ll see in the days ahead that we will have more to say, so please stay tuned on that.”
A recent flurry of reports about the Biden administration’s plans, which strike one of the most sensitive nerves of the U.S.-Israel relationship, was further complicated earlier on Wednesday by the House Republican speaker, Mike Johnson.
In an interview with the conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, Mr. Johnson said that Mr. Sullivan had recently sent him a written commitment that none of the billions of dollars in emergency aid for Israel, just passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden, would be denied to the unit.
Mr. Johnson even seemed to suggest that Netzah Yehuda may suffer no American consequences at all, even though Israeli officials have indicated that they expect imminent U.S. action against the battalion.
On Saturday, as the House was voting to approve a $26 billion aid package for Israel’s military and humanitarian aid for Gaza, Mr. Johnson, who is a strong supporter of Israel’s conservative government, said that he called Mr. Sullivan to insist that none of the money would be denied to Netzah Yehuda.
“No one knows this, but I called the White House immediately and talked with Jake Sullivan, and Tony Blinken was overseas at the moment,” Mr. Johnson said, according to a transcript of the interview on Mr. Hewitt’s website. “But I made him send me an email where he committed to me in writing that it would not affect any of the funding that we were working on to assist Israel in this critical time, and that they would be very judicious in that.”
Mr. Johnson also warned that he would challenge any punitive U.S. measure.
Mr. Sullivan “indicated to me that that won’t happen, that there were some allegations of some event many years ago,” Mr. Johnson said. “It seems to have been resolved, and I am very hopeful that they won’t try to proceed on that. If they do, we’ll intervene.”
Netzah Yehuda has been accused of human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank over several years, including the January 2022 death of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man in its custody.
The Israeli military investigated the incident and disciplined three Netzah Yehuda commanders, but brought no criminal charges against its soldiers.
— Michael Crowley
A U.S. aid package includes billions in military support for Israel.
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President Biden on Wednesday signed a sweeping foreign aid package that includes billions in unconditional military aid to Israel, hailing the bill as a demonstration of his commitment to Israel while urging the country to help ensure additional money allocated for humanitarian assistance to Gaza reaches Palestinian civilians “without delay.”
“My commitment to Israel — I want to make clear again — is ironclad,” Mr. Biden said at the White House after signing the bill on Wednesday. “The security of Israel is critical, and we’ll always make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Iran and the terrorists it supports.”
At the same time, Mr. Biden said the bill allows for a “surge” in humanitarian aid, including food, medical supplies and clean water for “the innocent people of Gaza,” who he said were “suffering badly” from the “consequences of this war that Hamas started.”
“Israel must make sure all this aid reaches the Palestinians in Gaza without delay,” Mr. Biden said.
The United States is by far the largest supplier of military aid to Israel, whose crushing offensive in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people, including over 14,000 children, since Oct. 7, according to local health officials and the U.N.
The near-complete siege on Gaza has also displaced nearly 1.7 million people and left hundreds of thousands starving as Israel continues to destroy civilian infrastructure and restrict the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid, according to the U.N.
The scale of the devastation being inflicted on Palestinians in the enclave has led to fierce public backlash against the Biden administration over its support for Israel.
The bill includes at least $13 billion in military aid for Israel, including more than $5 billion for its air defense systems. It also includes $9 billion for humanitarian aid to crisis spots around the world, including an unspecified amount for Gaza.
President Biden said in his remarks on Wednesday that the amount allocated for Gaza was $1 billion. The bill explicitly bars any of the funding from going to UNRWA, the largest aid group on the ground.
The bill’s inclusion of billions of dollars of military aid with no further limitations on how Israel can use it faced strong opposition from several left-leaning Democrats in Congress. Human rights and foreign policy experts have warned that Israel is violating international humanitarian law, which the State Department has denied, and that the U.S. could be violating its own laws by continuing to send no-strings-attached funding.
In December, Mr. Biden said that Israel was losing international support over its “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza. And in April, after the Israeli military killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen, he said Israel had “not done enough to protect civilians” and suggested that future U.S. aid could be dependent on Israel taking concrete steps to do so.
Speaking from the White House after signing the bill on Wednesday, Mr. Biden stressed that the funding was providing “vital support” to bolster Israel’s air defenses against attacks like the retaliatory barrage of drones and missiles that Iran fired earlier this month.
He did not elaborate on what action, if any, the United States would take if Israel continues to obstruct the delivery of aid, which the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered it to stop doing last month.
— Anushka Patil
