By Worthy News George Whitten and Stefan J. Bos
JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – As battles raged Saturday in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday he told U.S. President Joe Biden that he rejected Palestinian sovereignty in the Gaza Strip, contradicting the president’s recollection of their talks.
The two leaders spoke by phone on Friday for the first time in nearly a month, with Biden saying after the call that he believed it was still possible Netanyahu could agree to some form of Palestinian state.
“In his conversation with President Biden, Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated his policy that after Hamas is destroyed, Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement Saturday.
On Thursday, Netanyahu had rejected Palestinian statehood or sovereignty over the West Bank, saying it was incompatible with Israel’s need to have “security control over all the territory west of the (River) Jordan.”
Biden had said after the call Friday that it was possible Netanyahu could come round to some form of “two-state solution,” seen for decades by diplomats as the best way to bring peace to the Middle East.
“There are a number of types of two-state solutions. There’s a number of countries that are members of the U.N. that… don’t have their own militaries,” Biden told reporters after an event at the White House.
A senior Hamas official on Saturday dismissed Biden’s comments about the possibility of Israel agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
BIDEN ILLUSION?
“The illusion that Biden is preaching about a state of Palestine and its characteristics does not fool our people,” Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Islamist group’s political bureau, said in a statement.
“Biden is a full partner in the genocidal war, and our people do not expect any good from him.”
Hamas seeks the destruction of Israel and, effectively, the Jewish people, something it made clear by massacring 1,200 people, including raped women and babies, on October 7.
Netanyahu pledged to destroy Hamas and demilitarise Gaza following the Palestinian Islamist group’s attack on Israel and made clear in recent days that he rejects Palestinian statehood.
His announcement came while Israel continued its air and ground offensive in Gaza that so far killed at least 24,927 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
The death toll has been impossible to verify independently in a territory with virtually no press freedom and Hamas gunmen roaming the streets.
Israel has admitted that civilians were killed since it launched its campaign after the Hamas atrocities on October 7. However, Israeli officials blamed Hamas for using Palestinians and others, including hostages, as human shields.
ISRAELI STRIKES
Despite the rising death toll, witnesses said Israel hit targets across Gaza on Saturday while its planes dropped leaflets in the southern Rafah area, urging one million Palestinians seeking refuge there to help locate hostages held by Hamas.
The leaflets showed photos of 33 hostages, their names written in Arabic, urging the displaced to make contact. “Do you want to return home? Please make the call if you recognize one of them,” the leaflets read.
More than 100 of the hostages seized by Hamas were freed during a short-lived November truce. Israel says 132 remain in Gaza, 27 of whom have been killed in captivity.
With clashes ongoing, the Hamas-run health ministry claimed that aid entering the area isn’t enough.
“The aid entering the Gaza Strip does not meet basic health needs,” said ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra. “We try to differentiate between cases among the wounded and sick to save who we can,” he said in televised remarks.
He claimed that Israel controls the mechanism for the exit of patients who urgently require medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip.
Israel has expressed concern that aid may reach Hamas fighters, who it says also mingle with those trying to leave the territory.
AID TROUBLES
However, U.N. agencies, which Israel views as biased towards the Jewish nation, have condemned Israel’s actions.
The U.N.’s children’s agency, UNICEF, described the Gaza Strip as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child,” though places such as North Korea or Yemen may also vie for the title.
UNICEF deputy executive director Ted Chaiban said in statement after visiting the area that UNICEF was “trying to drip assistance through a straw to meet an ocean of need”.
He claimed that before the conflict, more than 500 trucks entered the Gaza Strip every day. “When I was there in November, about 60 aid trucks a day entered. Now, it is about 130 trucks a day alongside an average of 30 commercial trucks a day,” he added.
“This is with the opening of a second crossing point, but it still remains wholly inadequate. We are trying to drip assistance through a straw to meet an ocean of need.”
Britain’s ActionAid UK complained about “confusing and arbitrary rules about the type of aid permitted to enter Gaza,” The Guardian newspaper reported.
The charity said thousands of essential items were being stopped at border crossings and “prevented from reaching those who desperately need it,” as well as increasing the time spent on screening trucks, leading to a backlog at the border.
Israel has made clear it is closely monitoring aid to prevent weapons or other support for Iran-backed Hamas arriving in Gaza, which has impacted more than 2 million people living in Gaza.
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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