Biden Says Israel Went ‘Over The Top’ In Gaza

 President Joe Biden accused Israel of responding too harshly in Gaza and misidentified the president of Egypt Thursday night at a press conference.

“I’m of the view that the conduct of the response in the Gaza Strip has been over the top,” Biden said.

“I think that as you know, initially, the president of Mexico Sisi did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in,” Biden added, accidentally calling the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the president of Mexico. “I talked to him, I convinced him to open the gate.”

Israeli civilians were initially surprised at Biden’s warm embrace of the Jewish state after more than 1,000 civilians were massacred by Hamas terrorists. But now, three months later, Biden’s shift in tone, including sanctioning some Israeli civilians, is raising the alarms.

 

“I am pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage ceasefire,” he said. “I have been working tirelessly in this deal … how can I say this without revealing–” he said. “To lead to a sustained pause in the fighting and the actions taking place in the Gaza Strip.”

Biden said he hopes that an initial ceasefire would be later extended to a more permanent peace.

He said that he was working on a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel before Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

 

“In the very beginning right after before Hamas attacked, I was in contact with the Saudis and others to work out a deal where they would recognize Israel’s right to exist, make them part of the Middle East, recognize them fully, in return for things that the United States would commit to do,” he said.

Biden said two things were promised, but he couldn’t go into much detail.

“One of them was to deal with the protection against their arch enemy to the north west — north east I should say,” he said referring to Iran. “The second one, by providing ammunition and material for them to defend themselves.”

 

“Coincidentally, that’s the timeframe when this broke out,” he added. “I have no proof of what I’m about to say, but it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the Hamas understood what was about to take place and wanted to break it up before it happened.”

He added that he pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip as well.

“There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying,” he said. “It’s got to stop.”