Leaders of the United States and Israel expressed disagreement on the future of the Gaza Strip after the end of the war, as UN officials reported on ever more dire conditions in the Palestinian territory.
“Gaza will be neither Hamastan nor Fatahstan,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, according to his office.
He added that he was hoping for an agreement between Israel and the U.S. for the “day after Hamas.”
The U.S. has strongly supported Israel’s military campaign.
But with the war against Hamas now in its third month President Joe Biden has increasingly signalled frustration with the long-time ally.
Washington wants the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the West Bank and is dominated by the Palestinian organisation Fatah, to take back control of the Gaza Strip.
Israel opposes this. Hamas forcibly expelled the PA from the coastal strip in 2007.
Biden on Tuesday urged Netanyahu to change political course, suggesting the prime minister abandon his far-right allies.
“I think he has to change, and with this government, this government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move,” Biden said at an election campaign event in Washington, according to press travelling with him.
“This is the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” Biden said, adding that the government “doesn’t want a two-state solution” to the Palestinian conflict.
Israel is beginning to lose support around the world, warned Biden.
The war erupted on Oct. 7 when hundreds of Hamas terrorists broke out of Gaza and attacked southern Israeli communities in the worst such atrocity in Israel’s history. Some 1,200 people were killed.
