Any move by Israel to reoccupy the Gaza Strip could be a “big mistake”, US President Joe Biden said in an interview published on Sunday, as Jewish state forces prepare for a ground invasion.

As part of its military response to the October 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Israel declared war on that group with a brutal bombing campaign and warned more than a million people in northern Gaza to move south ahead of the ground operation. Pull.

In an interview with the CBS news program “60 Minutes,” Biden was asked whether he would support an occupation of Gaza by a U.S. ally, to which he replied, “I think that would be a big mistake.”

Hamas “does not represent the entire Palestinian people,” Biden added. But invading and “ending the extremists” is a “necessity,” the president added.

Hamas carried out its attack with militants crossing the heavily fortified border, killing more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, with shooting, stabbing and fire.

Israel’s retaliatory attacks in the days that followed leveled entire neighborhoods and killed at least 2,670 people in Gaza, most of them ordinary Palestinians.

Israel is facing stark warnings about the consequences of deploying troops in the Gaza Strip, with aid agencies warning of a humanitarian disaster, fears of an escalation of the conflict and the challenge of distinguishing between militants and civilians in the impoverished and densely populated enclave.

Israel first occupied Gaza during the Six-Day War in 1967, and was not fully returned to the Palestinians until 2005.

A year later, Israel imposed an air, sea and land blockade on the narrow 362-square-kilometer strip of land that also borders Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

In 2007, Israel tightened the blockade after Hamas wrested control of Gaza from the secular Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Asked whether the Hamas group, which Biden describes as “a gang of cowards,” should be completely eliminated, Biden replied: “Yes.”

“But there must be a Palestinian authority, there must be a path to a Palestinian state,” he continued, repeating the two-state solution long proposed by the United States.

The United States has already deployed two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean in a strong gesture of support for Israel. (JO)