Biden warns Israel is ‘starting to lose support’ over massive civilian death toll in Gaza bombings

Israel’s aggressive bombing campaign in Gaza is causing international support to ebb away due to the high number of civilian casualties, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday as Canada, Australia and New Zealand called for urgent efforts towards a ceasefire.

“They’re starting to lose that support,” Mr Biden said during a campaign fundraiser in Washington, hours before he was to meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mr Biden said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu must shake up the composition of his Likud-led cabinet, which experts have described as the most right-wing and extreme in Israeli history.

“Bibi’s got a tough decision to make,” Mr Biden said. “This is the most conservative government in Israel’s history.”

Mr Biden noted that the current makeup of the Israeli government “doesn’t want a two-state solution”.

Mr Netanyahu “has to change this government. This government in Israel is making it very difficult,” Mr Biden said.

“We have an opportunity to begin to unite the region,” he said. “They still want to do it. But we have to make sure that Bibi understands that he’s got to make some moves to strengthen ... you cannot say ‘no Palestinian state’ ... that’s going to be the hard part.”

Mr Biden’s comments go further in criticising the Israeli government than he has during public events so far.

They came as the prime ministers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand issued a joint statement calling for urgent international efforts towards a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza.

“We are alarmed at the diminishing safe space for civilians in Gaza. The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians,” they said.

A ceasefire cannot be one-sided and Hamas must release all hostages and stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields, they added.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan is set to travel to Israel for talks with its war cabinet.

Mr Netanyahu has said that Washington backs Israel in its stated goal of wiping out Hamas and rescuing the remaining hostages. However, the US and Israeli leaders appear to disagree on what should come after the end of the current hostilities. The US, which has until now rejected calls for a ceasefire at the UN and greenlit selling thousands of tank shells to the Israelis, now appears to softening in its support.

While the US has been arguing for the Palestinian Authority to have a leadership role in Gaza after the end of the conflict, Mr Netanyahu rejected the idea in a video posted to social media. “There is disagreement about the day after Hamas and I hope that we will reach agreement here as well,” Mr Netanyahu said, according to The New York Times.

“After the great sacrifice of our civilians and our soldiers, I will not allow the entry into Gaza of those who educate for terrorism, support terrorism and finance terrorism,” he added.

In October, Mr Biden responded to a question from The Independent by saying Hamas should release the hostages it kidnapped before any ceasefire in the bombardment of Gaza is implemented. “We should get... we should have a ceasefire, not a ceasefire... we should have these hostages released and then we can talk,” he said.

Israel’s army announced it had retrieved the bodies of two hostages from Gaza in an operation that killed two Israeli soldiers.

Soldiers retrieved the bodies of Eden Zakaria, 27, who was kidnapped from the music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, and Ziv Dado, 36, a soldier serving near the Gaza border. Dado was killed on October 7 and his body was taken to Gaza. Zakaria was wounded on 7 October, and it was unclear if she was taken alive or dead to Gaza, according to reports on Israel’s Channel 12.

During the operation to rescue the bodies, two soldiers, Gal Meir Eizenkot and Eyal Meir Berkowitz, were killed. Gal Eisenkot is the son of Gadi Eizenkot, who served as military chief of staff from 2015 to 2019 and sits on the war cabinet.