Politico

The U.K.’s top defense official repeatedly declined to second President Joe Biden’s comment that an Israeli occupation of Gaza would be “a big mistake.”

In an interview Tuesday evening, British Secretary of State for Defense Grant Shapps was given multiple opportunities to agree with Biden’s remark on “60 Minutes.” The president said that Israel had every right to defend itself and target Hamas during a ground invasion of the enclave. But he warned that Israeli forces shouldn’t stay behind after uprooting the militant group to control Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

Shapps didn’t side with Biden’s analysis. “Judgments about how that’s done, as long as it’s within international humanitarian laws, are for Israel” to decide, he said at the U.K. Embassy in Washington, D.C. While he wants to see a proportionate Israeli response, “there’s a job to be done.”

Asked again if he sided with Biden’s answer, Shapps said he didn’t want to “start advising [Israel] on precisely what they’re operation should be.” He also wouldn’t say whether Israel shared its invasion plans with the U.K., instead reiterating that “Israel has the absolute right to defend itself.”

Shapps’ evasion hints at a small, quiet split between the U.K. and U.S., two staunch allies that are often in agreement on some of the world’s greatest matters, most especially the defense of Ukraine against Russia. That could make his high-level meeting in Washington on Wednesday a little more awkward, especially his one-on-one with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Still, London and Washington are almost entirely aligned on supporting Israel as it retaliates following Hamas’ surprise attack that killed 1,300 people, including some Americans. Israel’s airstrikes and siege of Gaza have since claimed around 3,000 lives. It’s feared that a ground invasion of Israel would kill hundreds of civilians during intense, block-to-block urban warfare.

Both countries have sent military assets to the region, with British ships and surveillance aircraft operating near two American carrier strike groups and fighter jets.

Biden is on his way to Israel to show his support for the country, meeting in Tel Aviv with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was scheduled to then fly to Amman, Jordan, for a gathering with the country’s king, along with the leaders of Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. But an explosion at a hospital in Gaza that killed 500 people led to the event’s cancellation.

Hamas claims the Israeli military bombed the hospital, while Israeli forces assert that a Palestinian militant group is to blame.

“The United States stands unequivocally for the protection of civilian life during conflict and we mourn the patients, medical staff and other innocents killed or wounded in this tragedy,” Biden said in a Monday night statement.

The Biden administration isn’t openly celebrating the apparent ouster of Poland’s right-wing government in elections this week.

But in private, the president’s advisers are breathing a sigh of relief.

The White House sees the surprise success of Polish opposition parties, led by the Civic Coalition of Donald Tusk, as a boon for Ukraine and a win for democracy in Europe, according to three Biden administration officials. They, like others, were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about another nation’s election.

The results of the Sunday election startled many observers, especially after the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party was accused of using state and media resources to tip the landscape in its favor. Poland also had recently said it will stop sending weapons to Ukraine amid a trade dispute.

The election results could improve U.S.-Polish relations as well as ties between Warsaw and Brussels. Both Washington and the European Union were increasingly worried about the authoritarian leanings of the ruling party, which have put Poland on a collision course with Brussels over the years, with billions in EU funds on the line.

“It looks like the center has held in Poland,” said Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to the country.

Democratic lawmakers were among the most vocal in cheering the outcome, with some saying the results would align Poland again with Western democracies that respect the rule-of-law, human rights and press freedoms.

“This election really reinforces Poland as a strong, vibrant democracy, a participatory democracy, where elections matter a great deal and where the values shared by the E.U. and U.S. are certainly reinforced,” said Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.).

U.S. presidential administrations generally avoid commenting in-depth on other countries’ internal politics — especially when the country is an ally. The White House declined formal comment for this story.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, however, said in a statement on X, the social media site: “The record voter turnout in Poland’s elections is a strong expression of the democratic will of Polish citizens.”

There had been worry among White House aides that Poland — despite being an early supporter of Ukraine by hosting refugees and sending weapons — could over time back off its pro-Kyiv position.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said three weeks ago that Warsaw stopped supplying weapons to Kyiv and is focusing on arming itself instead, amid a dispute over Ukraine’s agricultural exports.

In the wake of the election, “we were pleased to see the democratic process work,” a fourth U.S. official said. “Poland is an important partner and we’ll work closely with the government that is formed.”

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who leads both the congressional caucus on Ukraine and Poland, called the election Poland’s most historic since the fall of the Soviet Union, especially given the large turnout.

She was hopeful the liberal coalition government likely to form would be effective in “resisting any authoritarian tendencies in that part of the world and continue on a pathway to integrating with the community of Europe and our NATO allies.”

Kaptur also expressed hope that Poland and Ukraine would settle their dispute over agricultural products.

The Law and Justice party remained the top vote-getter but fell well short of a majority, which means a coalition of more centrist parties is likely to sweep into power.

The transition period may take months — and a future prime minister is still to be confirmed, though it could be Tusk — so Biden administration officials indicated they would remain wary against any attempt at election chicanery.

Poland’s long opposition to Russian imperialism limited any chance of a Moscow puppet seizing power in Warsaw, but there had been fear that another term for Law and Justice would have been a bad omen for European unity. Civic Coalition leader Tusk is a former president of the European Council.

The EU already has to contend with the erosion of democracy in Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

New concerns arose inside the Biden administration after a pro-Russian, Orbán ally won a recent election in Slovakia, and following last year’s win by hardliner Giorgia Meloni in Italy, though her government has remained a staunch supporter of Ukraine.

President Joe Biden heads to Israel tomorrow not just to show support for a country during one of its darkest hours but to prevent the administration from getting bogged down in a larger Middle East conflict — one that could derail its agenda.

Biden has been privately adamant that the administration needs to demonstrate it has Israel’s back, said five U.S. officials, all granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. The decision to make a one-day visit to the country, followed by a brief stop in Jordan’s capital, was crafted with that in mind.

But those officials also said there was a subtler objective inside the administration. No one, in the Oval Office or elsewhere in the West Wing, has an appetite to make Israel’s fight against Hamas the top foreign policy priority — and especially with mounting domestic concerns and a growing struggle to sustain support for Kyiv in its war with Russia.

“We’re going to keep helping the Israelis wage this fight,” said one of the officials, adding that “there’s no interest in seeing the war widen.”

The administration has repeatedly signaled it won’t overstep in reaction to the conflict that has already killed 1,400 people in Israel, around 3,000 Palestinians, and resulted in 30 dead Americans plus a handful believed to be held hostage.

In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, Biden ruled out sending U.S. troops into the war and warned Israel against occupying Gaza, the Hamas-run enclave. Those messages are paired with repeated warnings to Iran and its proxy forces, namely Hezbollah, to keep out of the conflict. Their entry not only would force Israel to fight on two fronts, imperiling its defense, but also increase the likelihood that Biden would have to send more military support, potentially putting American boots on the ground.

The president will also carry with him to Israel an urgent message: Israel must abide by the rules of war and spare civilians. That edict, already delivered by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in their own trips to the region, will be voiced again by Biden directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to two of the U.S. officials. That push, aides said, was not just going to be made on humanitarian grounds, but also to reduce the chances of the war expanding and requiring additional American involvement.

That danger was underscored Tuesday when a rocket hit a hospital in Gaza, killing 500, an explosion that the Gaza Health Ministry said was caused by an Israeli air strike. The Israeli military asserted that Palestine Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group that operates in Gaza, was responsible. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, didn’t wait to find out what happened before canceling his trip to Jordan to meet with Biden.

Biden entered office focused on extracting the U.S. from wars in the greater Middle East, prioritizing competition with China, domestic renewal and, later, the defense of Ukraine. But Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel, and Israel’s massive retaliation, threatens to suck him into one of the world’s most intractable crises.

The difficult balancing act now facing the administration was evident in the decision to make the trip itself.

Biden advisers debated the wisdom of having the president travel to Israel, with some aides believing the security risks were too great. Others felt it would be a gift to Netanyahu, who is under immense scrutiny for the intelligence failures that precipitated Hamas’ attacks.

Biden has made plain to aides that he has no love for Netanyahu, with whom he has had a frosty relationship for decades and believes was making an undemocratic push to weaken the Israeli judiciary, according to advisers. But the president felt that he needed to show solidarity with a fellow democracy as well as push its Arab neighbors to assist with the Palestinians, the officials said.

Aides then raced to hastily put together the president’s visit before Israel moved on Gaza.

That battle, some aides warn, would be a highly problematic backdrop for any visit. The fight could be bloody and brutal, with urban warfare stretching from block to block. It could also endanger the hostages being held in Gaza and could draw other actors into a widening conflict.

With those forces in mind, Biden has already ordered assets to the region, including two carrier strike groups, fighter jets and other Navy ships carrying thousands of Marines. Their main objectives are to support fleeing American citizens and deter adversaries from escalating the conflict.

It’s unclear if the deterrent message is working. Iran’s foreign minister on Monday warned that Hezbollah could take a “preemptive action” against Israel before it launches the expected ground invasion. The militant group, which has around 150,000 rockets aimed at Israel, already started destroying surveillance cameras along the Lebanese border with Israel. Their forces have exchanged sporadic fire and rocket attacks, leading to about 13 killed in total since last Saturday.

Some experts say that the threat is growing, making the administration’s desire to keep some distance from the fighting that much harder.

Iran and its aligned groups are showing there is movement toward mobilization, rhetoric about future conflicts and that a deployment could happen, said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Iranian proxy groups. These are some of the specific steps that these groups take ahead of an operation, “and all of those steps are now occurring.”

Even if Hezbollah and Iran don’t wade deeper into the fight, questions are already swirling in Washington about how the conflict could distract the U.S. from Ukraine or sap the nation’s own security capabilities. Biden has rejected any insinuation that the country he leads can’t handle it all.

“We’re the United States of America, for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history of the world,” the president said during the “60 Minutes” interview. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.”

But the battle in the Middle East is also politically perilous for the president, who stands for reelection in just more than a year’s time. Biden has put a lot of stock in brokering normalization deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia. The administration is still working on that deal, but there’s little confidence that it’ll be finalized in the near future.

Polls also show that voters aren’t fully behind Biden’s strategy. Forty-nine percent of Americans said the U.S. is providing the right amount of support to Israel, according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, while only 16 percent of respondents told CNN that they trust Biden to make the right decisions. A majority, 54 percent, said they had not much trust or no trust at all in the president’s handling of the conflict.

The White House isn’t getting much help from Congress. The administration wants enough funding for Israel and Ukraine to last them a full year, a person familiar said in a brief interview following reports that the request could be as high as $100 billion. While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would push to get something passed in the upper chamber, political chaos in the speakerless House might stop a measure from reaching Biden’s desk.

All of this — the conflict, movements by Iran, a fractured polity and roiling Congress — have the real potential to distract Biden from other domestic and global concerns, some advisers fear, though they expect him to keep clear of the quagmire.

Biden’s main governing goal has been to show that democracies, regardless of how messy they are internally, can deliver for Americans and allies. And even as the administration grapples with the Middle East, new American long-range missiles were used by Ukraine against Russia and White House aides continue to plan for a possible summit next month between Biden and China’s Xi Jinping in San Francisco.

“History shows U.S. presidents are judged as much by how they respond to unforeseen foreign policy crises as they are implementing their public agenda,” said Jonathan Lord, who directs the Center for a New American Security’s Middle East work.

It was mid-July, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan was worried. Ukrainian forces were struggling to penetrate Russian front lines in a slow-moving counteroffensive, and time was running out to retake significant territory before a renewed Russian offensive in the fall.

Sullivan told his team to come up with options for additional weapons the U.S. could send to Kyiv that could help Ukrainian forces hit vulnerable targets deep inside Russia’s defensive lines.

Working together with the Defense Department, the National Security Council team came up with an idea. While the U.S. military’s existing stocks of the long-range Army Tactical Missile System were in short supply, the U.S. could send the medium-range version, carrying warheads containing hundreds of cluster bomblets that could hit targets 100 miles away.

The administration’s move to send the Anti-Personnel/Anti-Materiel, or APAM, an older version of the ATACMS that Ukraine had long sought, was kept secret for weeks after President Joe Biden made the final call, according to two U.S officials familiar with the discussions.

Their delivery and use marks a major escalation in the administration’s defense of Ukraine, providing Kyiv’s forces with a new and destructive ability to strike Russian targets well behind the front lines. That’s exactly what happened early Tuesday, with Ukrainian outlets reporting that Kyiv had destroyed nine Russian helicopters in the eastern cities of Berdyansk and Luhansk.

U.S. officials kept the decision to send them, and their actual shipment to the battlefield, quiet in order to maintain Kyiv’s element of surprise. Washington and Kyiv were concerned that announcing the transfer would prompt Russia to move equipment and ammunition depots farther behind their front lines and out of range of the missiles.

The road to shipping the weapon has been a long one, and the ATACMS has been at the top of Kyiv’s wish list since the start of the war. The following account is based on information provided by the two U.S. officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

Biden decided to send the missiles to Ukraine after months of debate among his top national security aides. Perhaps tipping his hand that he was pushing for the weapons to be sent, Sullivan in July told an audience in Aspen that the administration was willing to take risks in support of Ukraine’s defense.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and then-Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley had long resisted sending ATACMS. As POLITICO first reported, they argued that the U.S. already had a limited inventory of the weapon. They wanted to ensure DOD maintained a large enough stockpile for contingencies that might arise elsewhere in the world.

The NSC team wanted a solution that would balance Ukraine’s battlefield needs with DOD’s readiness concerns, at a reasonable cost. They knew Russia’s forces, though vast, were ill-equipped and ill-advised, and closely-stacked columns of armor behind the front lines were vulnerable.

The Biden administration had already started sending 155mm cluster artillery rounds to Ukraine in July, which have been used along the front lines to hit dug-in Russian positions. Cluster munitions explode in the air over a target, spreading bomblets over a wide area to increase the destructive radius of the weapon. They are banned by more than 100 countries because the unexploded ordnance has the potential to maim or kill civilians.

The APAM variant of the ATACMS was a logical weapon to send to Ukraine because it was not part of any Pentagon war plans, and the Ukrainians can use them to more effectively take out open-air ammunition stores behind the Russian front lines, along with Russian motor depots.

Given the huge concentration of Russian troops along with their armor and munition depots still relatively close to the front lines, the new weapon can be expected to hit Russian logistics and command and control centers hard.

The team presented the proposal to Sullivan in an Aug. 23 memo. On Aug. 28, Sullivan directed that the proposal be added to the agenda of an upcoming meeting of the Biden administration’s top national security officials, called a principals committee meeting.

At the Aug. 30 meeting, the committee unanimously approved sending the weapons. Austin, Milley and Secretary of State Antony Blinken all backed the proposal.

Biden relayed the news to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyyin a Sept. 21 White House meeting: Ukraine would get a version of ATACMS, if not the long-range variant Kyiv had sought for so long.

U.S. officials secretly approved sending APAM in the package of aid announced Sept. 21, under the category of cluster munitions, the officials said. The administration briefed a number of members of Congress in a classified setting in order to prevent leaks.

The decision to send the weapons now comes as the administration has grown concerned about a Russian buildup of troops and equipment for a fall offensive, in what could be the largest Russian movement in months.

Russian forces have launched a series of mostly unsuccessful attacks against Ukrainian positions in Avdiyivka in the eastern Donetsk region over the past week, but have been repelled with large losses. The Russians have resorted to the relatively crude tactics of its earliest assaults in February 2022, throwing lightly equipped forces against Ukrainian lines in attacks that have been repulsed by the Ukrainian defenders.

More attacks along the hundreds of miles of Ukrainian front lines are expected in the coming weeks, making it critical that Ukraine has the longer-range ATACMS to hit airfields and ammunition depots to blunt any Russian logistical advantages.

While Biden administration officials do not think Ukraine can achieve its goal of cutting off the Russian land bridge to Crimea before winter sets in and stalls the counteroffensive, they hope providing APAM can help mitigate any Russian advantage and buy Kyiv’s forces some time to recapture additional territory.

U.S. officials still require Ukraine to refrain from using American weapons to strike inside Russia, but there are no restrictions on using the equipment to hit targets within Ukraine and the occupied Crimean peninsula. Kyiv has also agreed to keep track of where its forces are firing cluster bombs, to help with cleanup later.

President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday in what is likely to be a dramatic show of solidarity with a nation reeling from Hamas’ deadly attack.

The announcement of Biden’s impending trip was made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday. Blinken himself was in Israel, where he had held hours of meetings with the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The trip by Biden could come on the cusp of Israel launching a ground invasion of Gaza, a backdrop that has left some administration officials worried.

Netanyahu invited Biden to visit when the two men spoke on Saturday, the officials said, with one of them saying the administration was “weighing” the offer.

Biden had told aides he’s interested in going, as his presence would demonstrate strong U.S. support after Hamas killed more than 1,400 Israelis and took around 150 hostages, including Americans. But the likelihood of escalating hostilities could mean that any future trip occurs during a particularly precarious point in the developing war.

White House aides noted that Biden has made daring trips before, namely his visit to Kyiv in February, as the war with Russia raged. That visit was considered by many aides to be one of the highlights of his presidency. The 80-year-old Biden has also traveled elsewhere to the region — visiting both Poland and Lithuania — as demonstrations of the United States’ commitment to defending democracies worldwide.

Back in February, the U.S. communicated to Russia to not interfere with the trip and Moscow, perhaps mindful of an American reprisal, did not try to stop the president, though air raid sirens did go off as Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy walked the streets of Kyiv. Hamas, a group the United States has designated a terrorist organization, would be more likely to take a provocative strike at a traveling president, according to one of the officials.

America’s intense war-time diplomacy is so far failing to sway Arab countries in the Middle East — and President Joe Biden’s expected visit to the region may not help.

In recent days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been nearly ghosted by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and given a bizarre history lesson by Egypt’s ruler. U.S. officials have been unable to get most Arab leaders to denounce Hamas for the Palestinian militant group’s brutal attack on Israel or make statements supporting Israel’s military response.

The diplomatic struggle suggests that U.S. influence is receding in the region, where governments’ interests often diverge from that of Washington and both Russia and China are vying for sway. And unequivocal U.S. support for Israel — as opposed to the more nuanced positions it often takes in Middle East flare-ups — may be one of the biggest barriers to better relations.

The Hamas attack on Israel has been so massive and violent, killing more than 1,200 Israelis, that many regional leaders are still trying to figure out their positions.

“Given the fact that we are at the very early stages of this situation, U.S. diplomacy is succeeding as much as anyone can expect it to succeed,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former adviser to the Palestinian Authority. “But it is too early right now to talk about a major breakthrough.”

A Biden trip to the region could complicate the task.

Pro-Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas, might see it as provocative. If Biden doesn’t visit Arab countries, leaders there could feel snubbed.

“Biden going there is going to send a clear message that the U.S. is on the side of Israel in this,” said Jonathan Schanzer, an analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “It will anger some of the Arab world, but I think it will be important for the region to see the administration not waver.” The U.S. president could visit Israel as early as this week.

Officials and analysts warn against writing off the U.S. just yet, noting that behind-the-scenes talks may be more fruitful than public statements admit. Arab leaders especially may not be willing to say or do things in public that would anger their populations, where support for Palestinians runs high.

Blinken has been the face of the diplomatic push, visiting Israel and six majority-Arab countries in the past several days.

He has insisted there’s significant consensus on some basic goals, including a desire to prevent the conflict between Israel and Hamas — which is based in the Gaza Strip — from spiraling into a wider regional war.

“What I’ve heard from virtually every partner was a determination, a shared view that we have to do everything possible to make sure this doesn’t spread to other places,” he told reporters on Sunday. There also was “a shared view to safeguard innocent lives; a shared view to get assistance to Palestinians in Gaza who need it, and we’re working very much on that.”

But U.S. efforts to convince Egypt to open a border crossing to let Palestinians with foreign citizenship leave Gaza have yet to succeed.

Egypt is blaming Israel, saying its bombardments and other actions are preventing Cairo from sending humanitarian aid through the crossing for needy Palestinians in Gaza.

Egyptians also are wary of any suggestion that they take in Palestinians fleeing Gaza, fearing that Israel will never allow them to return even after it tears apart the tiny strip in its hunt for Hamas fighters. Such a crisis would echo past Palestinian displacements that effectively became permanent.

The U.S. does appear to be having some influence with Israel.

U.S. and other foreign officials worked successfully behind-the-scenes to convince Israel to back off an initial 24-hour evacuation notice to some 1 million people living in northern Gaza.

“They heard from across the U.S. government concern about the plan,” a Biden administration official said, having been granted anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

To the Biden administration’s disappointment — though not necessarily to its surprise — Arab countries also have been either measured or silent when it comes to denouncing Hamas by name. If they’ve explicitly criticized Hamas, such as the United Arab Emirates did, it’s generally been in combination with statements urging both sides to stay restrained.

The militants’ attack was unusually deadly, and Hamas also has taken scores of hostages. But Israeli reprisals have killed thousands of Palestinians, and Israel says it intends to eliminate Hamas.

That’s intensifying worries about the 2.2 million Palestinian civilians stuck in Gaza. An Israeli siege has led to severe shortages of water, fuel and electricity there.

Already, amid numerous Israeli airstrikes, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced within Gaza. This comes ahead of one thing few believe Washington can or is willing to try to stop: an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

Blinken said he told Arab officials that it “must not be business as usual with Hamas going forward.”

But some of these governments have connections with Hamas, and their leaders are well aware that many of the ordinary Arab citizens they rule strongly support the Palestinian cause for which Hamas says it is fighting.

Qatar is home to some top Hamas leaders and a Hamas political office. The tiny Arab state is now serving as an interlocutor for a major diplomatic priority of the United States and other countries: freeing the hostages, some of whom hold nationalities other than Israeli.

At the same time, leading Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are deeply wary of Iran, a major patron of Hamas. Iran also backs Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that has clashed with Israel.

Biden has, in recent days, shifted his language away from unequivocal support of Israel after the attack to include concerns about protecting Palestinian civilians. He has also warned Israel that occupying Gaza may not be worth the cost.

But Biden and the United States have long been seen as far more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, adding to grievances in the region.

Khaled Elgindy, an analyst with the Middle East Institute in Washington, argued that Biden’s more recent nuanced language came too late. What the U.S. said publicly early on is the message that resonates most among Arabs, he argued.

“The statements of restraint have to be made in real-time, otherwise they’re meaningless,” he said. And “if it’s not public, it doesn’t count.”

As Blinken shuttled from country to country, the public reception he received from some Arab leaders was jarring.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi lectured him about the suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation but also claimed falsely that Jews had never been persecuted in Egypt.

“It is true what happened over the past nine days was very difficult and too much, and we unequivocally condemn it,” Sisi said. “But we need to understand that this is the result of accumulated fury and hatred over four decades, where the Palestinians had no hope to find a solution.”

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, meanwhile, kept Blinken waiting for several hours before meeting with him on Sunday. According to the Saudi readout of the meeting, the crown prince called for a stop to the “military operations that have claimed the lives of innocent people” — effectively siding against the Israeli offensive.

Reports also emerged that the Saudis were pausing U.S.-backed talks about normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel.

The crown prince often keeps visitors waiting, even if they are top figures from a key partner such as America. But to do so during this crisis was remarkable.

In the days after the Hamas strikes last weekend, the Saudi royal also spoke to Iran’s president.

Despite a sustained rivalry that has played out in a bloody proxy war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iran recently restored diplomatic ties broken off years earlier — adding to the confusing tangle of rivalries and interests in the region.

That said, some Arab officials are rooting for U.S. efforts to succeed, though they acknowledge it could be a while before long-term results.

“There is no doubt in my mind that without American leadership, we would be in a far tougher position,” one Arab diplomat said. “The objective today is to stop the bleed, and although Band-Aids are being applied, the wound is too deep.”

President Joe Biden said he was “shocked and sickened” by the killing of a 6-year-old Muslim boy in Illinois on Sunday that the Department of Justice is investigating as a federal hate crime.

“This horrific act of hate has no place in America, and stands against our fundamental values: freedom from fear for how we pray, what we believe, and who we are,” Biden said in a statement Sunday night.

“As Americans, we must come together and reject Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry and hatred,” Biden continued. “ I have said repeatedly that I will not be silent in the face of hate. We must be unequivocal. There is no place in America for hate against anyone.”

On Saturday, a 71-year-old Illinois man fatally stabbed a 6-year-old boy and seriously wounded his 32-year-old mother, targeting the pair for their Muslim faith amid the ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas, according to police.

The boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was stabbed 26 times and pronounced dead at the hospital, according to the sheriff’s office. His mother was also stabbed several times but is expected to recover.

The suspect, Joseph M. Czuba, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crimes and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to the sheriff’s office.

The Justice Department announced Sunday night that it has opened a federal hate crime investigation into the events leading to the death of Al-Fayoume and the injuries suffered by his mother. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was “heartbroken by the abhorrent killing.”

Following the start of the war, police in U.S. cities and federal authorities have been on high alert for violence driven by antisemitic or Islamophobic sentiments. DOJ said the incident “cannot help but further raise the fears of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities in our country with regard to hate-fueled violence.”

Illinois lawmakers also expressed condolences and condemned the killing late Sunday night. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called the killing “nothing short of evil.”

“Every individual deserves to feel secure in their community, their school, their grocery store, their mosque, synagogue, temple, or church,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “But these hate crimes don’t happen in a vacuum. We must all stand united and speak out against hate.”

“I’m disgusted by this horrific violent hate crime that targeted an innocent Illinois mother and child because they are Muslim,”Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said on X. “I condemn the barbaric, cold-blooded murder of six year old Wadea Al-Fayoume and hope the bigoted attacker is brought to justice.”

The Biden administration is considering a presidential visit to Israel as a sign of support for the country following the brutal attack by Hamas.

Two U.S. officials, granted anonymity to detail sensitive internal discussions, said President Joe Biden could land in Israel as early as this week. But they stress a trip might not happen any time soon, or at all, depending on the security situation in Israel and the state of a war that is quickly spiraling out of control. Israel is on the verge of ordering a ground invasion of Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invited Biden to visit when the two men spoke on Saturday, the officials said, with one of them saying the administration was “weighing” the offer.

Biden has told aides he’s interested in going, as his presence would demonstrate strong U.S. support after Hamas killed more than 1,300 Israelis and took around 150 hostages, including Americans. But the likelihood of escalating hostilities could mean that any future trip occurs during a particularly precarious point in the developing war.

Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the National Security Council, said “we have no new travel to announce,” but never denied that a trip was in the works.

White House aides note Biden has made daring trips before, namely his visit to Kyiv in February, as the war with Russia raged. That visit was considered by many aides to be one of the highlights of his presidency. The 80-year-old Biden has also traveled elsewhere to the region — visiting both Poland and Lithuania — as demonstrations of the United States’ commitment to defending democracies worldwide.

But while the trip to Ukraine’s capital involved a secret 10-hour train ride, one to Israel would, in some ways, be even more complicated.

Back in February, the U.S. communicated to Russia to not interfere with the trip and Moscow, perhaps mindful of an American reprisal, did not try to stop the president, though air raid sirens did go off as Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy walked the streets of Kyiv. Hamas, a group the United States has designated a terrorist organization, would be more likely to take a provocative strike at a traveling president, according to one of the officials.

And a visit of U.S. senators to Tel Aviv this week underscored the danger. The group of lawmakers, which included Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, had to seek refuge in a bomb shelter when warning sirens blared. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, however, did visit Israel in the last week without significant complications.

The debate about the trip would also come against the backdrop of the Biden administration’s growing worry over the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza amid Israel’s heavy bombardment and siege of the enclave.

There is an expectation that Israel will mount a ground offensive in the coming days, with experts predicting that weeks of urban warfare would inevitably lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. Officials in Gaza say that more than 2,600 Palestinians have already been killed in Israel’s retribution strikes over the past week.

The White House will meet Friday afternoon with a group of top House lawmakers to discuss plans for sending aid to Israel, four Capitol Hill aides confirmed.

The meeting comes as the Biden administration prepares a new supplemental funding request meant to support Israel’s military and defense capabilities in its war with Hamas.

The group of lawmakers is expected to include top House appropriators and leaders of the Foreign Affairs committee, two aides said. Rep. Patrick McHenry, who is serving as the acting House speaker, will also join the meeting, one aide said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The meeting comes as House Republicans continue to try and elect a speaker, having been without one for days.

Nicholas Wu and Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.