There isn’t much information about President Joe Biden’s views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. However, the United States provides Israel with financial, military, and political support. The United States has used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council 42 times against resolutions condemning Israel.
The United States is one of ten countries in the G20 that have not recognized Palestine as a state. President Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to advocate for the creation of a Palestinian state in March 1977.
Biden made clear in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support,” according to the White House. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushed to the White House for meetings and was phoning foreign counterparts, while Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Israel’s defense minister.
“Terrorism is never justified. Israel has a right to defend itself and its people,” Biden said in a statement that also warned “any other party hostile to Israel” against “seeking advantage in this situation.” Washington’s support for “Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering,” the president said. His Pentagon chief said the U.S. was committed to helping Israel to “protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism” and with its defense needs.
Hamas’ unprecedented incursion, coming on a major Jewish holiday, was the deadliest attack in Israel in years and was threatening to spiral into a broader conflict. Israel retaliated with airstrikes in Gaza. “We are at war,” Netanyahu said.
The hostilities dealt a significant blow to U.S. efforts to expand the Arab-Israeli Abraham Accords normalization agreements, not only with Saudi Arabia, which has commanded most of the public attention, but also with smaller Arab states.
U.S. officials say they intend to press ahead but acknowledge efforts are unlikely to bear fruit while there is an active conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Blinken had been planning a trip to the Middle East, with stops in Israel and Saudi Arabia, later this month, but those plans are now on hold, according to multiple U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.
In the immediate term, these officials said the U.S. would work Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among Arab partners in the region, to try to deescalate the situation. But given the scale of the Hamas attacks and Israel’s military response, the officials said they were not optimistic about any short-term solution.
Like Biden, who said the U.S. “unequivocally condemns this appalling assault,” many world leaders stressed that Israel has a right to defend itself and they pledged solidarity.
“We believe that order will be restored and the terrorists will be destroyed,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a post on his official Telegram channel. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and had relatives who died in the Holocaust, said “Israel’s right to self-defense cannot be questioned.”
European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen denounced the “senseless attack” by Hamas and said, “This violence is neither a political solution nor an act of bravery. It is purely terrorism.”
German Chancellor OIaf Scholz said his country stands beside Israel, a sentiment echoed by the Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted that he was shocked by the attacks and that “Israel has an absolute right to defend itself.”
In Vienna, the Israeli flag was raised at the Austrian chancellor’s office and Foreign Ministry in a gesture of solidarity. “There is no excuse for terror,” Nehammer said in a post on X.
Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and a former ambassador to Israel and Egypt, told the state Tass agency that Moscow was in touch with “all parties (of the conflict), including Arab countries” and urged “an immediate cease-fire and peace” between Hamas and Israel.
Bogdanov did not specify the Arab nations with which Russian diplomats were speaking. Saudi Arabia called for an immediate halt to the fighting, urging both sides to protect civilians and exercise restraint.
But in Iran, Israel’s regional archenemy, members of parliament opened their session Saturday by chanting “Death to Israel” and “Israel will be doomed, Palestine will be the conqueror.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said “today’s operation created a new page in the field of resistance and armed operation against occupiers,” the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.
In Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, hundreds took to the streets to celebrate the operation by Hamas. In the Bourj al-Barajneh camp south of Beirut, residents danced in the streets, while young men in the northern city of Tripoli distributed celebratory sweets to passersby in the streets.
In the Bekaa Valley, pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked the roads. The country’s highest Sunni religious authority called for mosques to broadcast “God is great” over loudspeakers following afternoon prayers “in solidarity with our people in Palestine.”
