Biden Will Ask Netanyahu ‘Tough Questions’ After Gaza Hospital Bombing: White House

President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) in New York on Sept. 20, 2023. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

U.S. President Joe Biden is preparing to ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu some “tough questions” during their planned meeting scheduled for Oct. 18 after flying into Tel Aviv in the midst of the Israel–Hamas conflict, according to a White House national security spokesman.

The meeting comes just one day after the bombing of a hospital in Gaza allegedly claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinians.

Israel has blamed the Palestinian Islamic Jihad for the casualties following the strike on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, claiming it was the result of a misfired rocket.

The terrorist group, however, has rejected that accusation and blamed ongoing Israeli airstrikes for the catastrophe.

While it is currently unclear exactly who is behind the strike, President Biden is both “outraged” and “saddened” at the “horrific loss of life” following the bombing of the hospital and has directed the national security team to gather “as much information and context as possible” on the matter, National security spokesman John Kirby told reporters en route to Tel Aviv.

“As we’ve been saying now for a week, we are unequivocal in our firm belief that innocent civilian lives should not be suffered, should not be lost, should not be injured by the fighting between Israel and Hamas,” Mr. Kirby said of the Biden administration.

“And we also mourn and grieve and express our deepest condolences to all those family members and loved ones and friends of those who were tragically killed in today’s explosion.”

Biden to Ask Some Tough Questions

“When he talks to Prime Minister Netanyahu and to the war cabinet, he’s going to be doing a few things,” the spokesman said of President Biden.

“One, he’s going to get a sense from the Israelis about the situation on the ground and, more critically, their objectives, their plans, their intentions in the days and weeks ahead. And he’ll be asking some tough questions. He’ll be asking them as a friend—as a true friend of Israel. But he will be asking some questions of them,” he added.

Amid the tragic aftermath of the bombing of Gaza's Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital gather to make a press statement, surrounded by lifeless Palestinian bodies, on Oct. 17, 2023. Mohamed Masri/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Asked if President Biden has directed his national security team to gather information regarding Tuesday’s attack on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital because he believes Israel might be behind the bombing, Mr. Kirby stressed this was not the case.

“I wouldn’t characterize this as an investigation,” he said. “He [President Biden] has directed the national security team to gather as much information and context as possible. We all want to know how this could have happened,” the spokesman said.

Expanding on the “tough questions” President Biden plans to ask, Mr. Kirby noted: “By tough questions, I don’t mean menacing or in any way adversarial. Just hard questions that a good friend of Israel would ask about where they think they are going, what their plans are going forward.”

During his meeting with Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday, President Biden will also be discussing the humanitarian needs in Gaza, where more than 2 million people are currently being deprived of access to electricity, water, and food supplies, the spokesman said.

People mourn by the coffins of five members of the Kutz family who were killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack on their kibbutz of Kfar Aza, during their funeral in Gan Yavne town in central Israel, on Oct. 17, 2023. Oren Ziv/AFP via Getty Images

Biden Will Continue to Stand in Solidarity With Israel

He will also meet with some of the families of the victims who lost their lives during Hamas attacks on Israel—which killed more than 1,300 people and at least 31 Americans—as well as family members whose relatives remain hostages of the terrorist group, Mr. Kirby said.

An estimated 200 people, including children and the elderly, were taken by Hamas during its surprise attack on the south of Israel on Oct. 7.

More than 3,000 people, many of them women and children, have reportedly been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s attack.

“The president felt strongly it was important to continue to stand in solidarity with Israel and the Israeli people in their hour of need following the appalling terror terrorist attacks last week,” Mr. Kirby said of the upcoming meeting.

Following his visit to Israel, President Biden had initially planned to travel to Amman, Jordan for meetings with Arab leaders, but that trip has been canceled in the wake of the Gaza hospital strike, which saw protests erupt in the Middle East.

However, President Biden still intends to speak with both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on his flight home from Israel, Mr. Kirby said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.