White House refutes claims of canceling meeting with Israel due to Netanyahu’s comments

The White House denied claims it canceled a high-level meeting with Israeli counterparts for Thursday following reports that it had after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the United States of withholding aid to his country.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu released a video on social media saying the Biden administration “has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.” The White House rejected the claim later in the day.

As a result of the video, Axios reported that the Thursday meeting, which was supposedly about Iran, was canceled, though a White House official denied this.

“We have been working to find a time to schedule the next SDG that accounts for the travel and availability of principals but have not yet fully finalized the details, so nothing has been canceled,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner. “In the meantime, meetings with Israeli officials are being held throughout the week at expert and senior levels on a range of topics.”

Netanyahu’s comments, in which he called it “inconceivable” that the U.S. would withhold aid, were the latest spat between him and the U.S. over the course of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, even though the U.S. has continued to provide offensive and defensive military support for its strongest Middle Eastern ally.

President Joe Biden and his administration opted to pause one military aid shipment to Israel last month, which included 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, and it remains that way, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

The U.S. held up this specific shipment over concern with the potential for significant casualties if Israel were to use them in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where most of the area’s population had fled over the course of the war.

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Biden recently said there’s “every reason” to conclude that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political interests, and he threatened to withhold offensive aid to Israel if it conducted a full-scale invasion of Rafah, which the administration maintains it hasn’t seen to date.

U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to Israel and Lebanon this week to settle tension along Israel’s northern border, where a continually escalating conflict could lead to a full-fledged war, which the U.S. desperately hopes to avoid.