Not spoken to Joe Biden since ‘over the top’ remarks, Benjamin Netanyahu says

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he has not spoken to US President Joe Biden since the president made remarks about Israel’s military.

Joe Biden said that Israel’s military response in the Gaza Strip to the October 7 attacks by Hamas has been “over the top” so far and it has “got to stop”.

“I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza, in the Gaza Strip, has been over the top. There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s got to stop,” he had earlier said.

Benjamin Netanyahu responded, “I appreciate President Biden’s support for Israel since the beginning of the war. I don’t know exactly what he meant by that.”

On humanitarian crisis across Gaza, Joe Biden said that Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi initially “did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in.”

“I talked to him, I convinced him to open the gate. I talked to Bibi to open the gate on the Israeli side,” he said, referring to Benjamin Netanyahu.