The president made his statement late Thursday after Israel and Hamas called for a cease-fire to the bloody 11-day conflict.
WASHINGTON (CN) — President Joe Biden reaffirmed his support for Israel and condemned the Palestinian militant group Hamas during a speech on Thursday evening.
“The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks from Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups that have taken the lives of innocent civilians in Israel,” he said.
The conflict between the Israeli government and Hamas lasted almost two weeks, after the militant group began firing rockets into Israel on May 10. The state’s Iron Dome defense system deflected most of the rockets, however, and the government then began firing weapons back into Gaza in retaliation.
They used precision-guided weapons in order to avoid civilian casualties, they claimed. Due to the Gaza Strip’s dense population, there were 20 times as many Palestinian deaths in the conflict as Israelis.
At least 232 Palestinians, including 65 children, and 12 Israelis have died in the worst conflict on the Gaza Strip since the 2014 Gaza War, which lasted two months.
The Biden administration hesitated for days to take a definitive stance on the crisis. In the days after violence first broke out, they declined to say whether they thought Israel’s response to Hamas’s attack was proportional.
Progressive lawmakers in the meantime condemned Israel’s strategy, and several — including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — attempted to block a $735 million arms deal to the state in response.
On Wednesday, however, President Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to de-escalate the conflict in what White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki called “quiet and intensive diplomacy.”
The heads of state spoke again on Thursday after Netanyahu announced a cease-fire with Hamas.
“In my conversation with President Netanyahu, I commended him for the decision to bring the current hostilities to a close in less than 11 days,” Biden said.
He also assured the prime minister his “full support to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome system to ensure its defenses and security in the future.”
He extended gratitude to President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, senior Egyptian officials and other diplomats in the region for helping bring about the cease-fire.
“These hostilities have resulted in the tragic deaths of so many civilians, including children,” the president said, “and I send my sincere condolences to all the families, Israeli and Palestinian, who have lost loved ones, and I hope for a full recovery of the wounded.”
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