Iran attack doesn’t mean Israel can stop flow of Gaza aid, White House says

Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel will not stop American demands for more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, the White House says, nor will it cause President Joe Biden to backtrack on the ultimatum he gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the treatment of civilians and aid workers.

Last week, Mr Biden told Mr Netanyahu that US policy towards Israel’s six-month-old war against Hamas would depend on whether Israel can “announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers”. That pronouncement was made after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, one of whom was a US citizen.

At the time, Mr Biden called the airstrike against a trio of marked vehicles from the nonprofit “unacceptable”. He later told the Univision television network there was “no excuse” for Israel “to not provide for the medical and the food needs” of civilians in Gaza and called Mr Netanyahu’s approach to the war “a mistake”.

But that was before Tehran fired what Israeli and US officials described as a salvo of roughly 300 separate munitions against Israel over the weekend. The strikes precipitated a massive defensive action by the Israeli Defense Forces as well as allied forces from the US, the UK, France, Jordan and other Arab nations. The combined force of these defensive actions downed approximately 99 per cent of the drones and missiles filed by Iranian forces.

In a statement following the attack, Mr Biden said he’d again spoken to Mr Netanyahu to “reaffirm America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel”.

At the same time, a top aide to the president has stressed that Mr Biden’s reaffirmed