WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden defended his handling of the Gaza war and touted progress on a cease-fire proposal between Israel and Hamas in a Thursday news conference that was dominated by questions about his age and fitness for office.
Addressing reporters at the conclusion of the three-day NATO summit in Washington, Biden acknowledged that Israel has been “less than cooperative” with the United States over aid access to the Gaza Strip.
“I support Israel, but this war cabinet is one of the most conservative war cabinets in the history of Israel,” he said in response to a reporter's question about whether there was anything Biden wished he had done differently over the course of the war.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said Israel should be doing more to minimize civilian harm and expand humanitarian aid access in the Palestinian enclave. But Biden has faced pressure from some Democrats who say the United States should further leverage Israel's military assistance to stem the bloodshed in Gaza, where local health authorities say over 38,200 people have died in the more than nine-month war.
“There's a lot of things in retrospect I wish I'd been able to convince the Israelis to do, but the bottom line is we have a chance now," Biden added.
He told reporters there were “still gaps to close” on the three-phase cease-fire and hostage-release plan that he unveiled in late May and was later endorsed by the UN Security Council.
“We're making progress. The trend is positive. Now, I'm determined to get this deal done and bring an end to this war, which should end now,” Biden said.
The cease-fire talks gained momentum last week when Hamas submitted a counterproposal to the US-backed deal. The lead US negotiators — CIA Director William Burns and Brett McGurk, White House coordinator for the Middle East — traveled to the region this week to bridge the remaining gaps.
After meeting with McGurk in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that he was committed to the negotiations “as long as Israel’s red lines are preserved.” Netanyahu faces pressure from his right-wing ministers not to accept a truce deal that fails to ensure the Palestinian militant group’s total defeat.
An Israeli negotiating team was slated to travel Thursday evening to Cairo to continue the cease-fire talks with Qatari, Egyptian and US officials.
The US-backed deal would begin with a six-week halt to the fighting, during which elderly, wounded and female hostages would be released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and a surge of humanitarian assistance.
The deal’s second and third phases are seen as hardest to implement, as they call for Hamas to release the remaining hostages and for Israel to fully withdraw troops before achieving its war aim of defeating Hamas.
Biden spoke Thursday as the Israeli military pushed deeper into Gaza City, an area it claimed to have cleared of Hamas earlier in the war. The militant group has warned that Israel’s renewed raids and evacuation orders for thousands of Palestinians living in Gaza’s largest city could bring the negotiations “back to square one.”
Israel launched its war in retaliation for Hamas’ deadly rampage on Oct. 7, during which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 others taken hostage in southern Israel. Israeli authorities have said about 120 hostages remain in Gaza, roughly a third of whom are believed dead.
Biden took questions from reporters Thursday exactly two weeks after his disastrous performance in a debate with former President Donald Trump, during which the 81-year-old incumbent struggled to finish his thoughts.
During the debate, Trump referred to Biden as “a bad Palestinian” and claimed Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack would not have occurred on his watch.
