Future U.S. support for Israel's war on Gaza depends on new steps to protect civilians and aid workers, President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.
Biden and Netanyahu spoke by phone days after Israeli airstrikes killed seven food aid workers in Gaza and added a new layer of complication in the leaders' increasingly strained relationship.
Biden, a Democrat, "emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable," the White House said in a statement following the leaders call.
"He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers," it noted.
"He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps."
Biden also told Netanyahu that an "immediate cease-fire is essential" and urged Israel to reach a deal "without delay," according to the White House.
The leaders' conversation comes as the World Central Kitchen, founded by restauranteur Jose Andres to provide immediate food relief to disaster-stricken areas, called for an independent investigation into the Israeli strikes that killed the group's staff members, including an American citizen.
Biden earlier said he was "outraged and heartbroken" by the deadly strike, whose victims also included three Britons, a Pole, an Australian and a Palestinian.
The White House has said the U.S. has no plans to conduct its own investigation even as they called on Israel to do more to prevent the killing and wounding of innocent civilians and aid workers as it carries out its operations in Gaza.
The death toll in Gaza has reached more than 33,000, mostly women and children, local health officials said Thursday, with over 75,660 wounded in the onslaught.
Israel's attacks began on Oct. 7, when the Palestinian resistance group Hamas stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, and taking around 250 people hostage.
Biden was also expected to reiterate his concerns about Netanyahu's plan to carry out an operation in the southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. Vice President Kamala Harris also joined the call.
Despite the growing divisions, the Biden administration has proceeded apace with arms transfers and deliveries to Israel. Just this week, on Monday, the Democratic administration's "Daily List" of munitions transfers included the sale to Israel of more than 1,000 500-pound (225-kilogram) bombs and more than 1,000 1,000-pound bombs.
Officials said those transfers had been approved before the publication of the list on Monday – the day Israeli airstrikes hit the World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza – and that they fell below the threshold for new congressional notification. Also, they noted that the bombs are not for delivery to Israel until 2025.
Israel has acknowledged responsibility for the strikes and claimed the convoy was not targeted and the workers' deaths were not intentional.
Andres harshly criticized the Israeli military for the strike, and his organization has paused its work in Gaza.
"The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon," he wrote on social media platform X. "No more innocent lives lost."
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history.
Within two months, researchers say, the offensive already had wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria's Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine's Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Daesh terrorist group.