President Joe Biden told reporters Tuesday that it’s now up to Hamas to approve a Ramadan ceasefire halting the violence in Gaza.
Biden spent the weekend at Camp David preparing for his State of the Union address on Thursday and monitoring the slow progress toward a Gaza ceasefire. Recent 2024 polling shows Biden locked in a dead heat or even trailing former President Donald Trump ahead of the election in November, and the fighting in Israel is causing him to bleed support from the Democratic base.
“It’s in the hands of Hamas right now. The Israelis have been cooperating. There’s an offer out there that’s rational. We don’t know what — we’ll know in a couple of days what’s going to happen, but we need the ceasefire,” he stated before boarding Air Force One for his return trip to Washington, D.C. “We need to see what Hamas does. There’s got to be a ceasefire because Ramadan — if you’re getting into a circumstance where this continues through Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem, it’s going to be very, very dangerous. So, we’re looking. We’re trying hard for that ceasefire.”
The president recently authorized that shipments of humanitarian aid be airdropped into Gaza, and he added that the U.S. would continue its efforts to surge assistance to the Palestinian people.
“I’m working on them very hard. We’re going to get more. We must get more aid into Gaza. No excuses,” he told reporters.
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Finally, just before boarding, the president suggested that Israel’s offensive had not soured his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Asked how he would characterize the relationship, Biden simply responded, “Like it’s always been.”
Biden had steadfastly backed Israel’s attempts to root Hamas out of Gaza after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks but has distanced himself in recent months after encountering a surge of domestic pressure to call for a permanent end to the fighting.