Biden moderates comment on Netanyahu’s role in Israel-Hamas conflict

President Joe Biden tried to walk back his implication that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the Israel-Hamas war for political reasons as he walked out of a White House event announcing his border executive order.

“Is Prime Minister Netanyahu playing politics with the war?” one reporter asked Biden Tuesday.

“I don’t think so. He’s trying to work out a serious problem he has,” Biden said.

Earlier Tuesday, Time published a profile of Biden and a transcript of writer Massimo Calabresi’s interview with him. In the piece, which focused on Biden’s foreign policy, the president first said he would not engage with a question about whether Netanyahu was prolonging the war as he struggles to lead an emergency unity government amid growing discontent from the broader electorate beyond his hard-line base of power.

“There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” Biden said when asked whether Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation after saying he wouldn’t comment. “And I would cite that as — before the war began, the blowback he was getting from the Israeli military for wanting to change the court. And so it’s an internal domestic debate that seems to have no consequence. And whether he would change his position or not, it’s hard to say, but it has not been helpful.”

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In the Time article, Biden did defend Netanyahu from the International Criminal Court after it announced it was seeking indictments for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.

“The answer is it’s uncertain and has been investigated by the Israelis themselves,” Biden said. “The ICC is something that we don’t, we don’t recognize. But one thing is certain, the people in Gaza, the Palestinians, have suffered greatly for lack of food, water, medicine, etc. And a lot of innocent people have been killed. But it is — and a lot of it has to do not just with Israelis, but what Hamas is doing in Israel as we speak. Hamas is intimidating that population.”