Top Biden adviser reveals she confronted Netanyahu

Daniel Payne
Wed, March 13, 2024 

Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to improve compliance with international humanitarian law” during her visit to Israel late last month.

Power revealed the details of her conversation with Netanyahu at POLITICO’s Health Care Summit today in Washington.

"Even if Hamas doesn’t care about civilian life, and it’s proven that again and again, that doesn’t relieve the obligation of a combatant to observe those principles,” she said. “Clearly, more needs to be done.”

Power, echoing President Joe Biden, reiterated the administration’s position that Israel must not attack Rafah, the city in the Gaza Strip where more than 1 million Palestinians have taken refuge from Israeli bombing.

She said the city in Gaza is a major pipeline for humanitarian and medical assistance.

“To the degree there is humanitarian infrastructure, it is in Rafah,” she said.

Power said an Israeli assault on the city would undermine the U.S. plan to build a pier to offload aid to Gaza from the Mediterranean Sea.


Her comments are among increasingly blunt messages from the Biden administration to Israel about its actions in Gaza — and come as Senate Democrats have said blocking weapons shipments to Israel is on the table should Netanyahu go ahead with an invasion.

Netanyahu has vowed to invade — Israel says Hamas fighters are hiding in the city — even after Biden said the action would be a “red line.”

Power called out the medical, hunger and sanitary threats to Palestinians, but she demurred when asked at the summit about pro-Palestinian activists' labeling of the war as genocide.

“My focus is on saving as many lives as we can and scaling the humanitarian operation, and that will continue to be my focus,” she said.

Still, people sympathetic to the Palestinians’ plight have pressed the administration to do more. Some of Power’s own staff have criticized her for not standing up to the White House over the Biden administration’s support of Israel.

Though aid delivery efforts are ongoing, it’s not enough, Power said.

“We need to go well beyond that,” she said.