This IS a problem for President Biden AND Prime Minister Netanyahu….
The skirmishes continue between Hamas and Israeli forces….
President Biden has begun a tricky maneuver: breaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Gaza war strategy — while sticking with Israel and its fight against Hamas, which is still holding hostages.
Why it matters: No one incident led Biden to start changing his course with Netanyahu, whom he has known for 40 years. It’s an accumulation of events and decisions by the prime minister over the last few weeks, U.S. officials tell Axios.
Between the lines: Biden hoped for weeks that he could use the war to push his Saudi mega-deal after the fighting. But in many ways, Biden sees Netanyahu as the one responsible for the deal slipping away.
Behind the scenes: The U.S. officials say Biden — and many other senior officials at the White House and the State Department — are extremely frustrated by what they see as ungratefulness by Netanyahu.
- Biden has given the Israeli government unprecedented support over the past five months, at the cost of strong pushback from the president’s party during an election year….
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After the president asserted that Mr. Netanyahu’s military strategy has been “hurting Israel more than helping Israel,” Israel’s leader dismissed his contention as “wrong.”
Here’s what we’re covering:
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Israel’s leader, rejecting a rebuke from the U.S. president, says he is doing his people’s will.
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Thousands of pregnant women in Gaza suffer from malnutrition, health authorities say.
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A U.S. military ship has set sail to help build a pier off Gaza for aid…
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A US military ship is sailing towards the Middle East, carrying equipment to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza, the army says.
The support ship, General Frank S Besson, set sail from a military base in the state of Virginia on Saturday.
It comes after President Joe Biden said the US would build the floating harbour to help get aid into Gaza by sea.
The UN has warned that famine in the Gaza Strip is “almost inevitable” and children are starving to death.
The US and Jordan carried out an airdrop on Sunday, parachuting in more than 11,500 meals that included rice, flour, pasta, and canned food, the US military said….
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The Pentagon has said it could take up to 60 days to build the pier with the help of 1,000 troops – none of whom would go ashore.
Charities have said those suffering in Gaza cannot wait that long.
Meanwhile, an aid ship laden with some 200 tonnes of food had been expected to set sail from a port in Larnaca, Cyprus on Sunday afternoon, Cypriot media reported.
However, as of around 1700 GMT, Cypriot authorities said the vessel remained in port. It was repositioning within the harbour but was not expected to leave “for some time”, they said.
It follows an EU announcement that a new sea route would be opened over the weekend to allow aid to sail directly from Cyprus – the closest EU country to Gaza….
Palestinian fighters defended against Israeli raids in several sectors of the northern Gaza Strip on March 9. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) unit in the Combat Intelligence Collection Corps identified several Palestinian fighters operating near Israeli forces in Beit Hanoun and directed an airstrike targeting them. Israeli forces have been conducting an operation in Beit Hanoun to reclear the area of Palestinian fighters and locate military infrastructure for the past week. Palestinian militias reported that their fighters fired mortars and rockets targeting Israeli forces in eastern Jabalia and Zaytoun neighborhood, southeastern Gaza City. Palestinian fighters also clashed with Israeli forces in Zaytoun neighborhood.
Follow Up to Scott’s observation and comments in this post…..