Israel-Hamas war: Biden considering trip to Israel

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is considering traveling to Israel in the next few days, but such a trip has yet to be finalized, a senior administration official told The Associated Press on Sunday.

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Israeli officials said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extended an invitation for Biden to visit Israel during a telephone call on Saturday, according to Axios.

The president has not decided whether to make the trip, The New York Times reported.

The official said they could not publicly discuss internal deliberations about a potential presidential trip and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Israeli Channel 12 first reported the invitation, Axios reported.

White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told Axios “We have no new travel to announce.”

Biden visited Israel in July 2022 as part of a four-day swing through the Middle East, PBS reported.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to return to Israel on Monday, Bloomberg reported. It will be Blinken’s second trip to the area since Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

He is expected to coordinate efforts on the military response in the region, along with humanitarian efforts in the Gaza Strip, according to the news outlet.

In an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday evening, Biden warned Israel not to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, the AP reported.

“I think it’d be a big mistake,” Biden said in a conversation taped on Thursday, according to the Times. “Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people. And I think that it would be a mistake for Israel to occupy Gaza again.”

Biden added that “taking out the extremists” in the Gaza area “is a necessary requirement.”

Biden has not criticized Israel and has said that the nation had a right to defend itself from what he called “sheer evil,” the Times reported.

The president said during the “60 Minutes” interview that he favored creating a safe corridor for Palestinians to flee the fighting and to allow supplies to be sent to Gaza, according to the newspaper.