Were Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims accurate in his speech to US Congress?

Ruth Michaelson in Jerusalem
Wed, 24 July 2024

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress in Washington, DC.

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was filled with combative remarks, as well as claims about the war in Gaza, now almost in its tenth month.

Israel’s assault on the territory was triggered by the 7 October Hamas attacks on southern Israel, and has so far killed more than 39,000 people, with thousands more believed to be buried underneath the rubble.

Netanyahu made repeated references to the international criminal court, whose prosecutors in May issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and several senior Hamas leaders, accusing them ofwar crimes and crimes against humanity.

Here are some of the claims made by the Israeli prime minister during his speech, tested against information currently available.

Food aid for Gaza

The prosecutor of the international criminal court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza. This is utter, complete nonsense. It’s a complete fabrication. Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza. That’s half a million tonnes of food!

According to data from the UN, 28,018 aid trucks have entered Gaza since the war began. Routes into the territory no longer include the Rafah crossing, which Israeli forces stormed in early May, largely curtailing the aid supply into southern areas.

Since then, just 2,835 trucks have entered through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south and Erez in the north – delivering a tiny fraction of the aid needed.

Relief organisations have accused Israel of deliberately blocking aid from entering Gaza, imposing arbitrary and ever-changing restrictions on what is allowed to enter.

Sally Abi Khalil, Middle East and north Africa director for Oxfam, said in March: “Israeli authorities are not only failing to facilitate the international aid effort but are actively hindering it.”

Earlier this year, the world’s leading authority on famine, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, warned Gaza was on the brink of famine. In June, the organisation’s famine review committee said that due to an uptick in commodities allowed into northern Gaza, “the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring”.

However, they said a high risk of famine remained. “The situation in Gaza remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of famine across the whole Gaza Strip … The prolonged nature of the crisis means that this risk remains at least as high as at any time during the past few months.”

Safeguarding civilians

The ICC prosecutor accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. What in God’s green earth is he talking about? The IDF just dropped millions of flyers, sent millions of text messages, made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to get Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) do sometimes drop flyers or text Palestinians to warn them of their intention to attack an area. But such measures often fail to stop civilians being caught in a war zone, as was illustrated this week when Israeli forces issued an evacuation order affecting an estimated 400,000 people in Khan Younis.

The UN’s office for humanitarian affairs, Ocha, said: “The evacuation order was issued in the context of ongoing attacks by the Israeli military and gave no time for civilians to know from which areas they were required to leave or where they should go. Despite the evacuation order, Israeli military operations continued in and around the area unabated.”

Evacuation orders issued by the IDF mean that many people in Gaza have been forced to flee repeatedly: earlier this month, Andrea De Domenico, the head of Ocha, said 90% of Gaza’s population had been forced to flee at least once and many had been displaced as many as 10 times. While Israeli forces have labelled certain areas such as al-Mawasi as “humanitarian zones,” there have been airstrikes in areas previously designated as safe.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, estimates that more than 80% of the total land area of the Gaza Strip “has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as a no-go zone”.

Palestinians and aid organisations have repeatedly said that no place is safe in Gaza. Ocha described the mass evacuation orders as “confusing” and said Israeli forces were issuing these demands so civilians flee while intensifying attacks on these same locations or places civilians can use as escape routes.

These choices, they said, “place civilians in more danger and may increase the harm to civilians”.

Negotiations with Hamas


The war in Gaza could end tomorrow if Hamas surrenders, disarms and returns all the hostages, but if they don’t, Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’s military capabilities, end its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home.

There was no mention of a ceasefire in Netanyahu’s speech, although he did make a reference to ongoing negotiations. He lauded an Israeli military operation that freed four hostages but killed at least 274 Palestinians last month.

There are an estimated 114 hostages remaining in Gaza according to recent estimates, although this includes an undisclosed number of dead captives.

Netanyahu, who promised “total victory” during his speech, has maintained that only military pressure on Hamas will push them into signing a ceasefire deal. He has also insisted that Israeli forces remain in Gaza in the long term and be able to continue fighting even if they agree to a temporary pause in hostilities.

Those with close knowledge of the hostage negotiations, a vocal chorus of Israelis and even some of the hostages’ families accuse Netanyahu of standing in the way of a deal.

A poll published by Israel’s Channel 12 News shortly before the Israeli prime minister flew to Washington, two-thirds of the Israeli public believe returning the hostages is more important than continuing the fighting in Gaza, and that Netanyahu’s “total victory” is unlikely.

“The military pressure of more than nine months only resulted in the killing of hostages and many Palestinian non-combatants. Make a deal now!” said the former Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin this month.

Israeli negotiators, he said, should conclude negotiations “and bring it to the people so that everyone will know that the prime minister is the one who is blocking the deal”.