US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced that President Joe Biden is set to pay a solidarity visit to Israel on Wednesday to demonstrate that the country’s closest partner “had the right to self-defense” following the Hamas weekend attack over a week ago.
“President Biden will receive a comprehensive brief on Israel’s war aims and strategy,” Blinken said.
Around 500,000 Israelis have been evacuated and displaced in the 10 days since Hamas unleashed the bloodiest attack in the country’s history, the Israeli military said Tuesday.
The evacuations follow the brutal surprise attack by Hamas fighters, who broke through the heavily fortified border on October 7 and killed more than 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians.
It was the worst attack in the country’s 75-year history. Israel’s relentless series of retaliatory air strikes in the Gaza Strip have flattened neighborhoods and killed over 2,800, most of them Palestinian civilians including a large number of children.
More than one million people have been displaced inside the densely populated Palestinian territory, as Israel prepares for a full-blown ground offensive against Hamas.
