Israel has limited time before global outcry forces Biden to rethink support — US officials

US media reports increased pressure on Washington to change course on Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group and publicly call for a ceasefire, with US President Joe Biden’s administration officials growing wary that the images of carnage and deaths in Gaza may isolate the country on the global stage.

According to CNN, top Biden administration officials have been increasingly warning Israel that it will become more and more challenging to pursue Jerusalem’s goal of toppling Hamas in Gaza due to the international outcry, and that there is limited time to do so with full US support.

The outlet quotes unnamed sources saying close Biden advisers believe that it is a matter of weeks before the White House is compelled to call for a ceasefire.

It says that “particularly jarring to Biden and his national security team” were strikes on Jabaliya that accompanied an IDF takeover of a Hamas command center situated there, which reportedly caused many civilian deaths. Biden “didn’t like this at all,” one source is quoted as saying.

Israel accuses Hamas of forcing residents to stay there and preventing them from evacuating to southern Gaza, as Israel has called on civilians to do for weeks.

NBC quotes multiple unnamed current and former US officials as saying administration officials are more and more worried the country will become isolated on the world stage, as they voice concern about how Israel is conducting the war.

“If this really goes bad, we want to be able to point to our past statements,” the outlet quotes one official as saying, adding that the Biden administration doesn’t want there to be a perception that it supports all of Jerusalem’s actions and that US arms were used to kill civilians.

Israel accuses Hamas of using Gazan civilians and hospitals as human shields and making it impossible to harm the terror group without hitting uninvolved people in the process. It says it does its best in the circumstances to avoid killing civilians, and says Hamas has artificially raised the number of dead civilians in its figures to accrue international sympathy.

Jerusalem objects to any ceasefire or to any fuel entering the Strip, saying this would merely aid Hamas and help it regroup and replenish its stocks.