President Biden backed his ally’s stance blaming Palestinian militants for rocket strike on hospital that killed hundreds in war-torn Gaza and has inflamed anger across the Middle East          

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken listens on as US President Joe Biden and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wait to make statements before a meeting in Tel Aviv. AFP

October 19, 2023, TEL AVIV: US President Joe Biden on a visit to Israel Wednesday backed his ally’s stance blaming Palestinian militants for a rocket strike on a hospital that killed hundreds in war-torn Gaza and has inflamed anger across the Middle East. 

Arab countries blamed Israel, which has rained bombs on Gaza since the bloody October 7 attack by Hamas, and protests erupted in Muslim countries from Egypt to Pakistan while Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah vowed a “day of rage”.

But Biden, on a solidarity visit to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, voiced support for Israel’s position that a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket caused the deadly carnage at Gaza’s Christian-run Ahli Arab Hospital.

“I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” Biden said about the strike that killed 471 people according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry.

“And, based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” said the US president, referring to the armed movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which Washington designates “terrorist” groups.

“But there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we have to overcome a lot of things,” Biden added, as protests also erupted against Israel and the United States in the occupied West Bank and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

Asked later by reporters what made him sure that Israel was not responsible for the strike, Biden replied: “The data I was shown by my defense department.”

Biden has expressed “iron-clad” US support for top regional ally Israel and its military campaign -- retaliation for the killing of 1,400 people in the shock cross-border attacks launched by Hamas.

“We will continue to have your back,” Biden said after meeting Netanyahu’s war cabinet in Tel Aviv. “As you work to defend your people, we will continue to work with you and partners across the region to prevent more tragedy for innocent civilians.”

Biden cautioned Israelis not to be blinded by rage after suffering their deadliest-ever attack, warning that the United States made mistakes after September 11. “I caution this while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice we also made mistakes,” Biden said.

The US president said he was encouraging Netanyahu to ensure “life-saving capacity to help the Palestinians who are innocent and caught in the middle of this”. The US president said an agreement had been reached with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to open the Rafah crossing to allow about 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Biden said aid access to Gaza will likely begin on Friday because Egypt needs to “patch the road” to the crossing.

Biden and Sisi held a call following the trip, according to the White House. Sisi had previously denied that Egypt had closed the Rafah border. Biden praised the Egyptian leader: “Sisi deserves some real credit because he was accommodating”. On the other hand, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths estimated that about 100 trucks per day were needed to meet demand in Gaza.

Following Biden’s meeting, Israel announced not to block aid sent to Gaza from Egypt. The prime minister’s office underlined it will “not allow any humanitarian aid from its territory to the Gaza Strip as long as our hostages are not returned.”

The United Nations Security Council rejected a resolution condemning “the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas” on Israel. Twelve out of 15 Council members voted in favour of the resolution put forward by Brazil, while Russia and the United Kingdom abstained. The United States voted against which was enough to reject the measure.

Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas, which is holding 199 hostages in the besieged territory, has now claimed the lives of 3,478 people, according to health officials. Arab countries have almost universally blamed Israel for the hospital strike, either directly or through state media -- including Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, which are among the region’s few countries which have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Regarding the attack on the hospital, Archbishop Hosam Naoum, speaking alongside the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem, said that the al-Ahli Arab Hospital had received warnings by phone to evacuate on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. He would not state who had made those warnings.

In besieged Gaza, the hospital blast brought new horrors after 12 days of sustained bombardment that Israel says targets Hamas and which has destroyed entire city blocks. More than a million people have been displaced ahead of an anticipated Israeli ground offensive, according to the UN. Overnight, after the explosion, scores of bodies cloaked in blood-stained sheets and white plastic lined the floors at the nearby Al-Shifa hospital, where bereaved relatives tried to identify loved ones.

“As I entered the hospital, I heard the explosion. I saw a massive fire,” said Gaza resident Adnan al-Naqa. “The entire square was on fire. There were bodies everywhere, children, women and elderly people.” The Palestine Red Crescent Society said hundreds died including “internally displaced people seeking safe shelter”.

Entire Gaza neighbourhoods have been razed and survivors are left with dwindling supplies of food, water and fuel, unable to flee the 40-kilometre long strip blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007. “The situation in Gaza is spiralling out of control,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We need violence on all sides to stop.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and warned Israel against “the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”.

The UN coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, said the longer the war in Gaza goes on, the likelier it is for an incident to occur that could trigger a “very dangerous” situation leading to a wider escalation. “I must say one of those incidents was the hospital bombing in Gaza yesterday,” he told Al Jazeera.

Inside Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians who hold US or other foreign passports have desperately hoped to escape through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, the only way in or out of Gaza not controlled by Israel. The Rafah crossing has remained closed during the war as Israel has struck the Palestinian side, preventing the delivery of aid piled up in long convoys of trucks waiting in Egypt.

Sisi, in a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, denied Egypt was keeping the border closed and warned against any potential Israeli plan to permanently drive Palestinians out of Gaza. Such a “forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt” would set a precedent for also pushing West Bank Palestinians into Jordan, Sisi said. The effect, the Egyptian president warned, would be “eradicating the Palestinian cause” and making a future Palestinian state “impossible”.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation denounced Israel’s backers for granting the country “impunity” in its war in Gaza.

The 57-member bloc of Muslim-majority countries “deplore the international positions that back the brutal aggression against the Palestinian people, and grant Israel impunity, taking advantage of the double standards that provide cover for the occupying power”, said an OIC statement published after an emergency meeting of foreign ministers. It also blamed Israel for a rocket strike on Gaza´s Christian-run Ahli Arab Hospital that killed 471 people.

The OIC called on the international community “to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for these heinous war crimes against the Palestinian people”. It also condemned the United Nations Security Council for failing to stop the violence. “Everyone who gave Israel carte blanche to wage this deadly war provided it with weapons, and even sent military reinforcements to support it in committing this heinous crime, colluded with this crime,” Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said in his remarks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Israel was acting “with the full support of the United States and some Western countries”. Earlier, he told reporters in Jeddah that Islamic countries with diplomatic ties with Israel should expel their ambassadors and “stop exporting oil to this regime”, though the OIC statement did not mention such steps.