Joe Biden urges Israel to accept temporary ceasefire in Gaza Strip to enable hostage releases

The US President said he expected Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to halt further military action in order to secure the release of hostages.

An Israeli armoured vehicle rolls along the Israel-Gaza border. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

President Joe Biden called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a temporary halt to Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas militants and postpone a planned offensive in the enclave’s southernmost city.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday (Saturday AEDT), Biden said he expected Netanyahu to hold off on sending Israeli troops into Rafah, the Gaza city along the Egypt border whose population has swelled to nearly 1.5 million as Palestinians have been forced from their homes elsewhere during the four-month war.

Biden, who spoke with Netanyahu on Thursday, said he urged the prime minister to agree to a hostage deal.

“I’ve made the case, and I feel very strongly about it, that there has to be a temporary ceasefire to get the prisoners out, to get the hostages out,” Biden said.

“I’m hoping that the Israelis will not make any massive land invasion in the meantime,” Biden added. “It is my expectation that’s not going to happen.”

Negotiators have reached an impasse in their efforts to secure the release of about 130 hostages held by Hamas since the militant group led an Oct. 7 cross-border attack that Israeli officials said killed more than 1200 people, most of them civilians.

On Thursday, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns met with Netanyahu and David Barnea, the director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, in Israel to break the stalemate, according to people familiar with the matter. Netanyahu has called Hamas’s demands in the talks “delusional,” dampening hopes for an agreement.

Israel has rebuffed Hamas’s efforts to secure a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of the Israeli military from Gaza. Israel and Hamas are also at odds over how many Palestinian prisoners Israel will have to release in exchange for the Israelis held in Gaza.

Biden noted that American citizens are also being held hostage by Hamas and expressed optimism in a potential deal to bring them home.

“My hope and expectation is that we’ll get this hostage deal, bring the Americans home and the deal is being negotiated now and we’re going to see where it takes us,” he said.

Netanyahu and his right-wing government have resisted international pressure to work with world leaders and bring the fighting in Gaza to a quick end. On Wednesday, Netanyahu rebuffed French President Emmanuel Macron’s calls for Israel to hold back from an assault on Rafah, saying Hamas must be eliminated from the city.

“We will fight until complete victory and this includes a powerful action also in Rafah after we allow the civilian population to leave the battle zones,” he said on X.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in Munich on Friday urged Israel to avert its planned Rafah offensive, saying humanitarian-aid operations in Gaza were on “life support”.

“Rafah is at the core of the entire humanitarian-aid operation,” he said. “An all-out offensive on the city would be devastating.”

The Israeli government is floating plans to move civilians from Rafah to central Gaza, where they propose creating new tent cities. Israel is seeking support from the US and Arab nations for the plan.

Egypt, meanwhile, has started building an 8-square-mile (20.7sq km) walled enclosure on its border with Gaza as part of a contingency plan in case Israel’s military actions force Palestinians across the border. Egypt has long resisted any efforts to allow Palestinians out of Gaza amid fears they could be made permanent refugees.

Palestinian children in Rafah march during a protest on Wednesday, demanding an end to the war and their right to live, education and play. Picture: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday that Israel had no plans to push Palestinians out of Gaza.

“The state of Israel has no intention of evacuating Palestinian civilians to Egypt,” he said. “We respect and value our peace agreement with Egypt, which is a cornerstone of stability in the region as well as an important partner.”

More than 28,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed since Israel launched the war in response to the Oct. 7 attack, according to Gaza health officials. The figure doesn’t distinguish between combatants and militants. At least 235 Israeli soldiers have died since the military launched its ground assault in Gaza in late October.

Israeli soldiers have been fighting to bring an end to 17 years of Hamas rule in Gaza and secure the release of about 130 hostages captured on Oct. 7 who are believed to be held by Palestinian militants in the enclave. Israel privately estimates as many as 50 of the hostages could be dead.

As part of the search for captives, Israeli forces raided the main hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, after Israel said it had intelligence indicating that hostages kidnapped by Hamas had been held there and that the bodies of some of them could be on the hospital grounds.

Gaza health officials said Friday that the 350-bed Nasser Hospital had lost power and that four patients had died as a result of the cut in power and oxygen supplies. The Gaza Health Ministry said the power cut endangered the lives of six other patients in the intensive-care unit and three infants in the neonatal unit. Doctors at the hospital said the compound was hit by Israeli artillery fire.

The Israeli military said the hospital generators had malfunctioned but that backup power ensured that “vital functions” continued to operate while soldiers helped bring in a new generator.

The military said it was carrying out a “precise and limited” operation at the hospital that led to the detention of 20 militants who took part in the Oct. 7 attack, though it didn’t say how it linked the Palestinians to the October assault. Israeli forces directed the hospital to evacuate. Gallant said Friday that 7,000 Palestinians had left the area around the hospital.

The military later released a photograph of several mortar rounds and grenades it said it found inside the hospital compound, and said it found medications with the names of some of the hostages.

The raid at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis came as the International Court of Justice on Friday rejected an emergency request by South Africa to order Israel to take additional measures to protect Palestinians in Rafah, following the world court’s provisional orders last month directing Israel to ensure it complied with its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The January decision, however, didn’t order any specific changes in Israeli military operations and declined South Africa’s request to order Israel to cease its response to the Oct. 7 attacks.

The court, a judicial arm of the U.N. based in The Hague, said Rafah’s “perilous situation demands immediate and effective implementation” of the January orders, but no additional measures. Although ICJ orders are formally binding on states that have consented to its jurisdiction, the world court has no means to enforce its decisions.

In its emergency request Monday, South Africa, which has been closely aligned with the Palestinian cause, said it was “gravely concerned that the unprecedented military offensive against Rafah, as announced by the State of Israel, has already led to and will result in further large scale killing, harm and destruction.” Israel responded Thursday, telling the court it operated under an “enduring commitment under international humanitarian law to minimise harm to civilians, even as Hamas – in its utter contempt for life and for the law – continues its abhorrent strategy of seeking to maximise such civilian harm through its ongoing attacks against Israeli civilians and through its use of Palestinian civilians and civilian objects as shields in Gaza itself.”

Also on Friday, a gunman opened fire near a bus stop in southern Israel, killing two people and seriously wounding four others, according to Israeli health and security officials. Israeli security forces identified the attacker as a 37-year-old resident of East Jerusalem.

Dow Jones Newswires