UPDATED 1:48 P.M.
TEL AVIV/GAZA (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden pledged solidarity with Israel on Wednesday and said a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital seemed to have been caused by a rocket misfired by militants as he ended a Middle East peace mission that was curtailed by the explosion.
Raising fears of wider instability, protesters staged anti-Israeli demonstrations around the Middle East over the fireball that engulfed the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital late on Tuesday, which Palestinian officials said killed 471 people.
They blamed an Israeli air strike, while Israel said it was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Gaza Strip’s Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.
Biden promised more aid to Israel at the end of his impromptu one-day visit to the country, which is bombarding Gaza to try to root out militants from its ruling Hamas group after they killed 1,400 Israelis in a cross-border assault on Oct. 7.
He said of the hospital blast: “Based on the information we have seen today, it appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”
In Washington, the White House National Security Council echoed Biden, saying the U.S. assessment was based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information.
Arab leaders responded to the loss of life at the hospital, which they blamed on Israel, by cancelling a summit with Biden in Jordan. This had been intended as the second half of his carefully choreographed itinerary for emergency meetings with allies to avert a wider Middle East war.
DON’T BE CONSUMED BY RAGE, BIDEN SAYS
Biden said the United States would do everything it could to ensure Israel was safe while also urging Israelis not to be consumed by rage, reiterating that the vast majority of Palestinians were not affiliated with Hamas.
The Gaza health ministry said 3,478 Palestinians have been killed and 12,065 injured in Israeli air strikes on the besieged enclave since Oct 7.
Biden said the U.S. would provide $100 million in new funding for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“What sets us apart from the terrorists is we believe in the fundamental dignity of every human life,” Biden said. If that was not respected, “then the terrorists win.”
He also said he would ask Congress for an “unprecedented” aid package this week, before flying out of Israel after what ended up being a less than eight-hour visit.
Biden faced intense pressure to secure a clear Israeli commitment to let aid into Gaza from Egypt, to ease the plight of civilians in the small, densely populated coastal enclave.
At the end of his visit, Netanyahu’s office put out a statement saying Israel would let food, water and medicines reach southern Gaza via Egypt. It reiterated that it would not let aid in from Israel until Hamas released Israeli hostages.
BIDEN SUMMIT WITH ARABS CANCELLED
Biden’s Middle East trip was designed to calm the region, but Jordan called off his planned summit there with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority after the hospital blast. Instead he was expected to hold phone calls with Jordan and Egypt from Air Force One on his way home.
After talks with Netanyahu’s war cabinet, Biden held an emotional meeting with Israeli survivors of the Oct. 7 slaughter. He hugged retired grandmother Rachel Edri, who was held hostage at gunpoint in her home for 20 hours by Hamas and used food and conversation to stall them until their capture.
“Please keep supporting us in eliminating Hamas once and for all,” a soldier told Biden.
Hamas and witnesses later said Israel was bombarding Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, where the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital is located, and the group’s armed wing said it fired more rockets towards Israel’s biggest city Tel Aviv on Wednesday over what it called Israeli attacks on Gaza civilians.
Sirens sounded in central Israel but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
‘HELP US, HELP US!’
The accounts of destruction at the hospital were horrific even by the standards of the past 12 days, which have confronted the world with relentless images, first of Israelis murdered by Hamas gunmen in their homes and then of Palestinian families buried under rubble from Israel’s retaliatory strikes.
Rescue workers scoured blood-stained debris for survivors. The Gaza health ministry put the death toll at 471, though Israel disputed the figure. Palestinian ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said rescuers were still recovering bodies.
“We don’t know what it was, but we found out what it could do, after it targeted children, who were cut into pieces,” said Mohammad Al-Naqa, a doctor at the hospital who said 3,000 people were sheltering there when it was hit.
Palestinians were convinced the explosion was an Israeli attack, with no warning for patients, staff or the Gazans already made homeless by bombing to leave.
Israel later released drone footage which it said showed it was not responsible because there was no impact crater from any missile or bomb and no structural damage to surrounding buildings.
FURY ACROSS MIDDLE EAST
World leaders from U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the blast in statements that nonetheless avoided addressing who was to blame.
The blast unleashed anger across the Middle East.
In Lebanon, security forces fired tear gas and water cannon at protesters throwing projectiles near the U.S. embassy north of Beirut. State-sponsored marches were held across Iran, backer of Hamas and Israel’s sworn foe, with demonstrators carrying banners that read “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.
Palestinian officials said Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian teenagers near Ramallah in the West Bank during widespread protests.
There were new clashes on Israel’s border with Lebanon, part of the deadliest violence between the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and Israel since the last all-out war in 2006.
The U.N. Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland told the Security Council the hospital blast needed more investigation.
“I fear that we are at the brink of a deep and dangerous abyss that could change the trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if not of the Middle East as a whole,” he said.
(Reporting By Nidal Mughrabi in Gaza, Steve Holland aboard Air Force One, and Jerusalem Bureau; Writing by Peter Graff and Mark Heinrich; Editing by Gareth Jones and Philippa Fletcher)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden left Washington Tuesday evening on a whirlwind trip that was originally expected to touch down in Israel for an update on Israel’s war aims in its battle with Hamas militants, and then Jordan, to stress the need to get humanitarian assistance to Gaza civilians.
A strike on a Gaza hospital late on Tuesday that killed hundreds of Palestinians saw Arab leaders call off their planned summit with Biden in Jordan however, and that leg of the trip cancelled.
MEETING WITH ISRAEL’S NETANYAHU BUT NOT ARAB LEADERS
Biden is spending part of Wednesday in Tel Aviv for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials as Israel prepares a ground offensive aimed at eliminating Hamas militants in Gaza who killed 1,300 people during a rampage through southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7.
Biden will no longer fly to Amman for talks about humanitarian assistance after Jordan’s King Abdullah cancelled a summit with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas, who has long been opposed to Hamas and whose organization exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said after the Gaza hospital strike he would not meet the U.S. President.
Palestinian authorities say Israel is responsible for the strike, Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame. Biden backed Israel’s account.
HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS IN GAZA
Biden’s second trip to a war zone this year – he visited Ukraine in February – carries some risk. His goal was originally to show American solidarity with Netanyahu while trying to avoid a broader regional war involving Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and Syria.
How he accomplishes that balance while meeting only Netanyahu and Israeli officials is unclear.
The United States has stationed a carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean in a show of force for Israel and a second is on the way.
Biden also wants to avert a humanitarian calamity in Gaza where authorities say thousands have already been killed in Israeli bombardment over the last week.
Hundreds of tons of aid from several countries have been waiting in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula for days pending a deal for its safe delivery to Gaza and the evacuation of some foreign passport holders through the Rafah crossing.
“He’ll make it clear that we want to continue working with all our partners in the region, including Israel, to get humanitarian assistance in and provide some kind of safe passage for civilians to get out,” said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby.
ISRAEL RED LINES
Biden and Netanyahu, thrown into a wartime partnership despite deep political differences on the way forward in the Middle East, have joined forces.
Biden has given Israel full-throated support while stressing the need to head off a massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Their face-to-face meeting, after several phone calls since the attacks, will allow Biden to privately discuss concerns and possible red lines in the coming Gaza invasion.
Biden will also get an update on the scores of hostages taken by Hamas. The State Department has said 29 citizens of the United States were killed in the Hamas attacks, with 15 citizens and one lawful permanent resident unaccounted for.
Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement.
Biden will make clear that “Israel has the right and indeed the duty to defend its people from Hamas and other terrorists and to prevent future attacks,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv.
He said Israel would brief Biden on its war aims and strategy and how it will conduct operations “in a way that minimizes civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas.”
The U.S. and Israel agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza, Blinken said.
(Reporting By Steve Holland; additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Tel Aviv; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Heather Timmons, Alexandra Hudson)
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