President Biden on Wednesday backed Israel’s contention that a Palestinian group had caused an explosion at a Gaza hospital that killed hundreds of people. He also announced that the Israeli government would allow critically needed aid into the besieged Gaza Strip.
It was not clear whether the statements by Mr. Biden, who was in Tel Aviv, would dampen widespread anger over the war and the carnage on Tuesday at Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, which have prompted widespread anti-Israel protests from Tehran to Rabat, Morocco. Many civilians had taken shelter from Israel’s bombing campaign on the hospital grounds.
Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza and is battling Israel, blamed an Israeli airstrike without citing evidence — a claim that was widely accepted across the Middle East.
But American officials said evidence from a variety of sources pointed to a failed rocket launch aimed at Israel from within Gaza as the cause of the explosion. That was the conclusion Israeli officials began presenting on Tuesday night.
“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Mr. Biden said to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they sat side by side in a Tel Aviv hotel before a group of journalists. “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.”
In response to Hamas’s attack and hostage-taking on Oct. 7, Israel has bombarded Gaza with airstrikes, sealed off the territory to imports of vital supplies and told 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate south, while apparently preparing for a ground invasion. Gaza’s more than two million people are rapidly running out of water, food, fuel, electricity and medicine, hundreds of thousands are displaced, and many have no shelter.
