Biden highlights frustrations with Israel during high-profile press conference

(JTA) — WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Israel had been “less than cooperative” with the United States in its efforts to deliver assistance to Palestinian civilians, adding to pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the terms the Biden administration has brokered to bring about an end to the war.

“I met with most of the Arab leaders to try and get a consensus going as to what had to be done to get more aid and food and medicine into the Gaza Strip,” Biden said at a press conference on Thursday following a NATO summit, after being asked to review what the United States might have done differently in the nine months of war in Gaza. “We pushed it really hard — Israel was occasionally less than cooperative.”

Biden, who called the freewheeling press conference in part to dispel concerns about his mental acuity since a disastrous debate last month with his rival, Donald Trump, began by outlining his foreign policy accomplishments, listing among them his efforts to broker a deal to end the war, which he suggested was closer than ever.

“For months, The United States has been working to secure ceasefire in Gaza, to bring the hostages home, to bring back peace and stability in the Middle East,” he said. “Six weeks ago, I laid out a detailed plan… that was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, the G7,” the grouping of the seven major industrial powers.

Notably on Thursday, the G7 issued a joint release condemning Israel’s latest settlement expansion, naming its far-right finance minister, Betzalel Smotrich, who greenlighted the expansion.

The deal Biden is seeking would pause fighting for six weeks while Israel trades Palestinian prisoners for some of the 120 hostages remaining in Hamas captivity. The sides would then negotiate the terms of a second six-week period of ceasefire, which would lead to a permanent ceasefire.

“That framework is now agreed on by both Israel and Hamas,” he said. “So I sent my team on the region to hammer out the details. These are difficult, complex issues. There’s still gaps to close, but we’re making progress. The trend is positive. I’m determined to get this deal done and bring an end to this war which should end now.”

The talks, which in addition to Hamas include Qatar and Egypt, appear to be stuck in part on Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel reserve the right to restart the war in order to achieve its goal of dismantling Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. Netanyahu is facing increasing pressure from the international community, from the vast number of Israelis who protest weekly to take the deal and free the hostages, and from Israel’s military, which favors refocusing the war on the threat from Hezbollah in Lebanon. At the same time, members of his coalition are threatening to bring down the government if Netanyahu accepts a deal.

Biden administration officials have generally held back on criticizing Israel for difficulties in delivering humanitarian assistance to Gaza, which international officials have said verges on famine, attributing the halting aid delivery to wartime exigencies and to thieving by the Hamas terrorist group, which launched the war on Oct. 7 with massacres in Israel.

But Biden appeared to argue that much of the obstruction the United States has encountered stems from Israel’s government, the most right-wing in the country’s history. Cabinet ministers belonging to extreme right-wing parties have sought to delay the delivery of assistance and have backed protesters who block aid trucks as a means of forcing Hamas to release 120 hostages it still holds.

“This war cabinet is one of the most conservative war cabinets in the history of Israel, and there’s no ultimate answer other than the two-state solution here,” said Biden, who at the outset of the war wholly backed Israel. Netanyahu adamantly rejects a two-state outcome as a long-term goal in the talks.

Biden also rejected the Israeli far right’s ambitions to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, and of maintaining an Israeli military presence there. “The day after in Gaza has to be the end,” he said, “has to be no occupation by Israel in the Gaza Strip, as well as the ability for us to access, get in and out as rapidly as you can for all that’s needed there.”