The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reiterated this Monday in the first call he has held since mid-February with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, that he is not willing to end the war in Gaza, which There are already more than 31,700 dead, until “Hamas is eliminated.”
“I spoke tonight with the President of the United States, Joe Biden,” Netanyahu’s office reported in an official statement about the talk between the two leaders: “We discussed the latest developments in the war, including Israel’s commitment to achieve all the objectives: the elimination of Hamas, the release of all our hostages and the promise that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”
Biden and Netanyahu talk about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza
Biden spoke this Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time in weeks and they discussed the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and the situation in the city of Rafah, the southernmost point of the Palestinian enclave and bordering Egypt.
“President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to discuss the latest developments in Israel and Gaza, including the situation in Rafah and efforts to increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza,” the White House explained in a statement.
The call is the first in several weeks and comes after Biden assured that Netanyahu’s presence “does more harm to Israel than it helps” and after the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, called for early elections in Israel to force the conservative Israeli politician out of the coalition government.
Schumer assured last week in the plenary session of the Upper House that “it is clear that Netanyahu’s coalition does not meet Israel’s needs after October 7”, the day in which the armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas invaded Israeli territory near Gaza and murdered and kidnapped civilians of various nationalities and Israeli soldiers.
Biden said that the words of Schumer, a Jewish senator from New York, were a “good speech,” which has further widened the disagreement between the Israeli government and the United States.
More than 30,000 Palestinians killed
In recent months, the Israeli Army has invaded the Gaza Strip and pushed the population further and further south, killing more than 30,000 Gazans and putting more than a million people at risk of famine.
The US continues to see it as a red line for Israel to invade Rafah, south of the Gaza enclave with 1.4 million displaced people, and despite this, Netanyahu said this Sunday that they will enter the city and “operate” from there.
The UN demands that Israel act immediately against the famine in Gaza
This Monday, the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, demanded that Israel and the international community act immediately against the famine in Gaza , after it was known that half of its population, or 1.1 million people, suffers. “catastrophic food insecurity”.
This is the most serious level of food insecurity, according to the report published today by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global barometer on this matter.
The Secretary General stressed that this percentage is the highest “ever recorded anywhere,” according to this UN measurement system, and added that, furthermore, it is a disaster “entirely” caused by man.
Despite hunger and the fact that more than 70% of the dead in Gaza are civilians, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, the Security Council has been unable to approve a call for a ceasefire, after the United States imposed its veto until on three occasions, arguing that this would allow the rearmament and reorganization of the Hamas Islamists.
BY:AP
