Joe Biden has backed Israel’s stance on the devastating blast at a Gaza hospital during a one-day visit to Israel intended to mitigate the humanitarian impact of the Israel-Hamas conflict and prevent it escalating into a regional war.
In remarks to the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the US president said the evidence he had seen suggested it was “the other team” that was responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday night, which caused hundreds of casualties.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli military produced evidence it said showed that the blast was the result of a rocket launched by the militant group Islamic Jihad misfiring. The group denied responsibility.
The carnage at al-Ahli Arab hospital led to the cancellation of the second leg of Biden’s trip, to meet Arab leaders in Jordan, before the president had even left Washington. He is due to return directly to Washington after meetings with Netanyahu, top civilian and military officials in Tel Aviv, and families of victims of the Hamas attack on 7 October, which killed more than 1,300 people and began the latest cycle of violence.
The Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas, blamed an Israeli strike for the hospital blast, which a ministry spokesperson said killed 471 people.
The Israel Defence Forces produced evidence on Wednesday morning that it said showed there was no crater at the hospital that would have pointed to an airstrike. Instead, a spokesperson said the blast had been caused by the warhead and propellant of a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, which failed soon after launch from a nearby cemetery and had landed in the hospital car park. He claimed the high number of casualties was because the area was crowded with civilians.
Critics say Israel’s credibility has been undermined by its refusal to accept responsibility for past civilian deaths, including the shooting of the Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh last year. Israel initially blamed Palestinian militants, but later said there was a “high possibility” she was killed by an Israeli soldier.
On landing at Ben Gurion airport, Biden reached out to shake hands with Netanyahu, but the Israeli prime minister embraced him in a hug instead. Before they sat down to their first meeting at a Tel Aviv seafront hotel, Biden told Netanyahu he accepted the Israeli version of events at the hospital but suggested it might be difficult to convince others.
The US president said: “The point is, is that I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion of the hospital in Gaza yesterday, and based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you, but there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we’ve got a lot – we’ve got to overcome a lot of things.”
Asked a few hours later what convinced him that Israel was not responsible for the blast, Biden replied: “The data I was shown by my defence department.”
Biden’s trip is intended to show solidarity with Israel and to deter the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia intervening across the Lebanese border. But the White House said Biden would also be asking “tough questions” about its strategy in Gaza, and about humanitarian relief for more than 2 million Palestinians trapped and under constant bombardment in Gaza, with virtually no access to water, food or medical supplies.
As Biden and his aides sat down for a meeting with their Israeli counterparts, Netanyahu told Biden: “This will be a different kind of war because Hamas is a different kind of enemy. Hamas wants to kill as many Israelis as possible.” He added: “As we proceed in this war, Israel will do everything it can to keep civilians out of harm’s way.”
Biden told the Israeli war cabinet: “I want you to know you’re not alone. We will continue to have Israel’s back as you work to defend your people. We will continue to work with you and partners across the region to prevent more tragedy.”
He called on Israel to encourage “lifesaving capacity to help the Palestinians who are innocent, caught in the middle of this”.
“The world is looking,” the president added.
On Wednesday afternoon, Biden met family members of victims of Hamas’s attack as well as medics and security personnel who were among the first to respond.
The UN said more than 3,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since 7 October.
The hospital explosion has become a lightning rod for anger across the region, sparking protests across the Middle East.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told Al Jazeera the summit with Biden was cancelled because “there is no use in talking now about anything except stopping the war”.
Safadi said the meeting would be held at a time when the parties could agree to end the “war and the massacres against Palestinians”, blaming Israel for pushing the region to “the brink of the abyss” with its military campaign.
The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, had earlier pulled out of the meeting, after declaring three days of national mourning. The White House spokesperson, John Kirby, has told reporters on Air Force One that the “decision not to go to Jordan was mutual”.
Kirby added that Biden planned to speak to Abbas and the Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi by phone on his flight home to Washington on Wednesday evening.
King Abdullah said Israel’s response to the Hamas cross-border attack went beyond the right of self-defence to collective punishment of Palestinian civilians.
Kirby said Biden would underline continuing US military support for Israel but would also “get a sense from the Israelis about the situation on the ground and, more critically, their objectives, their plans, their intentions in the days and weeks ahead”.
“And he’ll be asking some tough questions. He’ll be asking them as a friend – as a true friend of Israel, but he will be asking some questions of them,” he added.
Protests broke out across the West Bank after the hospital blast, and in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, demonstrators threw rocks at the Palestinian security forces who fired on the crowds with stun grenades.
The outpouring of anger against Israel also fuelled a large rally on Tuesday near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, where police used teargas to disperse several thousand protesters who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and demanded the government close the embassy and scrap a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel is widely unpopular among many citizens.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah called for a “day of rage” to coincide with Biden’s arrival to the region. After the call, hundreds of demonstrators scuffled with Lebanese security forces outside the US embassy outside Beirut.
Even before the blast at the Gaza hospital, the visit was a gamble for Biden in terms of his international reputation and his domestic standing before an election year. The US believed it had struck humanitarian agreements with Netanyahu’s government over the past two days but these did not come to fruition.
As a condition of the US president’s visit, Israel agreed to a humanitarian package that included corridors into Gaza for relief supplies and safe areas for Palestinian civilians. But on the eve of his arrival, the border with Egypt, where aid has been stockpiled, remained closed.
Convoys of lorries carrying emergency food water and medical supplies are waiting on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza for the crossing point at Rafah to open, while Palestinians with foreign citizenship wait on the other side to leave Gaza. Egypt controls the border but requires Israeli agreement on what and who is allowed to pass through.
By Tuesday evening, the gate had still not been opened, but the border post and nearby urban areas were hit by airstrikes. At least 49 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes that hit homes in Rafah and Khan Younis, Gaza’s interior ministry said.
Kirby said Biden would use his visit to press the case for immediate humanitarian support for people in Gaza. “We want to see it be able to be sustained – food, water, obviously, electrical power, medicine – all the things that the people of Gaza are going to continue to need as this conflict continues to go on. So, he’ll make that case very, very clearly.”
Kirby added: “We’re optimistic that we’ll be able to get some humanitarian assistance in.”
Israel has partly restored water supply to southern Gaza but the UN said it constituted only 4% of the normal flow into the territory. The lack of clean water and the presence of bodies under the rubble has brought fears of an epidemic. Hospitals are in a state of collapse in the absence of electricity and fuel for generators.
