US President Joe Biden warned Israel to return tooccupy the Gaza Strip It would be a “big mistake,” although he defended the right of the Jewish State to enter the Palestinian enclave to eliminate fighters from the Islamist group Hamas.

Biden’s statements, made in an interview broadcast this Sunday on CBS, represent his first public attempt to try to contain the retaliation that Israel has taken against the Gaza Strip since the Hamas attack on October 7.

Until now, Biden had reaffirmed his unwavering support for Israel and had avoided criticizing the Jewish State for the blockade imposed on Gazawhich has prevented the entry of water, food and medicine since the Hamas attack, despite UN warnings about the possibility of a humanitarian crisis.

However, in the interview, the president expressed reluctance about a full-scale occupation of the Gaza Strip. “I think it would be a big mistake,” Biden told CBS. in the interview recorded on Thursday and broadcast this Sunday night. “What happened in Gaza, in my opinion, is that Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas do not represent all the Palestinian people. And I think it would be a mistake for Israel to occupy Gaza again,” he said.

Nevertheless, Biden considered it necessary to “eliminate extremists” who are hiding among the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt between the armistice of the 1949 Arab-Israeli war and the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel seized the Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The following year, Hamas, considered a terrorist group by several countries (including Israel, the US and the European Union), ran in the 2006 elections and won the majority of seats. of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Faced with the international threat of sanctions, the Islamist movement accepted a unity government with the president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas.

However, a violent fight in the streets of the Strip between supporters of Hamas and those of the Palestinian president ended with the expulsion of the latter from the enclave. Hamas began de facto rule in 2007 and since then the territory has been isolated and blocked by land, sea and air by Egypt and Israel. In addition, it depends on the Jewish State for supplies.

He Israeli army forcibly entered the Gaza Strip in 2009 and 2014but in both cases he chose not to remain in that territory.