Biden “angry” and “frustrated” ahead of Netanyahu call

President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s phone call on Thursday is the first time the two leaders will speak since an Israeli airstrike killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza. A senior administration official said that Biden is “angry” and “increasingly frustrated”, and fully prepared to make all of that known to Netanyahu in their conversation.

However, White House officials have emphasized that the US stance in supporting Israel’s current military operation has not changed. There has simply been no “shift in policy,” the senior administration official said. “What there has been is a shift in the president’s frustrations.”

Biden is also expected to discuss the need for better protection of aid workers and ramping up humanitarian aid entering Gaza. The ongoing hostages and ceasefire deal talks, as well as the concerns of a potential ground incursion into Rafah, will also be discussed.

Meanwhile, Chef José Andrés says his World Central Kitchen charity’s team in the Gaza Strip appears to have been deliberately targeted by the Israeli military. The deadly airstrikes hit three WCK vehicles in succession, killing seven staffers on Monday. The Israel Defense Forces and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have called the airstrikes mistakes that happen in war, but that explanation has been dismissed as insufficient and disingenuous by Andrés. “The airstrikes on our convoy I don’t think were an unfortunate mistake,” he told Israel’s Channel 12 in an interview. “It was really a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by everybody at the IDF.”