US President Lands in Israel, Amidst Anger over Killing of 500 in Gaza Hospital Attack
United State (US) President Joe Biden has arrived in Tel Aviv for talks with Israeli officials.
Hamas, Palestinian authorities, and other countries blame Israel for the explosion, which Hamas says killed 500 people.
But Israel says the blast at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday evening was caused by a rocket misfired by Palestinian militants.
The Israel Defense Force (IDF) says its evidence shows a Palestinian Islamic jihad rocket, fired from a cemetery, landed in the hospital car park.
The IDF says at least 450 rockets fired from Gaza since then have landed on Gazan territory.
United Nations (UN) Chief has called for “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” as world leaders condemn hospital attack while spontaneous protests erupt across the Middle East and elsewhere.
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More than 3,000 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack inside Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people.
According to the US leader, he will receive a comprehensive brief on Israel’s war aims and strategy and reaffirm Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security.
But what — if anything — Biden says in public, while in Israel, about the attack on the hospital, will be closely watched for signs of whether the US is recalibrating its stance on the conflict amid growing international outrage over Israel’s devastating bombing campaign on Gaza.
Blinken first announced Biden’s visit at the end of more than seven hours of talks with Netanyahu and other officials on Monday night, during which he said the Israeli prime minister agreed to come up with a plan to get humanitarian aid to Gaza civilians.
Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, trapping its 2.3 million people in the besieged enclave without water, food, fuel and electricity.
Blinken said the plan is to “enable humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas”, which launched one of the deadliest attacks on Israel in decades.
