USA sentenced on Saturday attacks by “Hamas terrorists”. Israel and pledged to ensure America’s most important ally has the means to defend itself.

President Joe Biden described the attack as “a terrible tragedy on a human level” and said he had spoken to the first Israeli Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirms his support.

“I told him that the United States stands with the people of Israel in light of these terrorist attacks.”he declared in a televised speech from the White House.

“In my administration “Support for Israel’s security is rock-solid and unwavering.”he emphasized.

Biden also warned that “now is not the time for any party hostile to Israel to take advantage of these attacks to seek benefits. “The world is watching.”

He emphasized that Israel – a country to which Washington supplied billions of dollars in weapons – has “the right to defend himself and his people” after the Iranian-backed Palestinian group Hamas launched air, naval and ground attacks.

At least 198 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,600 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed Washington’s commitment to Israel. “In the coming days, the Defense Ministry will work to ensure Israel has what it needs,” he said.

Trump accuses

Former President Donald Trump accused Biden, without evidence, of indirectly financing the attacks.

“These Hamas attacks are a shame and Israel has every right to defend itself with overwhelming force,” he said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks, which many reports say came from the Biden administration.”

Trump’s accusations echoed Republican claims that $6 billion given to Iran last month as part of a prisoner swap deal was used to finance the Hamas attack.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said on social media that this is “an embarrassing lie.”

The money “can only be used for verifiable purchases of humanitarian needs such as food and medicine,” Bates added.

Israel normalized its relations with neighbors Egypt and Jordan decades ago and in 2020 added three more Arab states to the list — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco — in what Trump considered his most notable foreign policy achievement.

Neighboring Canada has expressed its “unqualified condemnation of the terrorist attack … against Israel” and “fully supports Israel and its right to defend itself,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

Tensions between Biden and Netanyahu

At least 232 people were killed in the Gaza Strip on Saturday in airstrikes launched by Israel in retaliation, according to the health ministry of the Islamist movement in power in the Palestinian enclave.

President of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, demanded his country’s rights at the UN

At least 70 people have been killed in Israel since the start of the Hamas offensive, which fired thousands of rockets and saw its fighters infiltrate some towns in the country, according to reports from Israeli emergency services.

The military acknowledged that “Israeli soldiers and civilians” had been kidnapped during these infiltrations.

Biden and his administration have been pushing for months to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of the United States’ oldest allies in the Middle East, who share concerns about the development of Iran’s nuclear program .

Relations between the United States and Israel have become significantly tense since Netanyahu, leader of an administration that Biden described as “the most extreme” in the country’s history, returned to power in December 2022.

The US government has sharply criticized the justice system reform implemented by Netanyahu’s government, which it considers “undemocratic”, as well as the continued colonization policy of the Palestinian territories promoted by the prime minister.

Since the beginning of the year, violence linked to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has intensified, claiming the lives of at least 247 Palestinians, 33 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian before Saturday, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources. . (JO)