'Don't support Israeli occupation of Gaza': US reiterates after Benjamin Netanyahu's comments

The White House on Tuesday reiterated that President Joe Biden does not support an Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip once the war ends, underscoring the administration stance one day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will have a role to play in the strip for an "indefinite period."

Asked about Netanyahu’s comments to ABC News, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said he would leave it to Netanyahu to clarify what he means by “indefinite”

“President Biden has been very clear,” Kirby told reporters.

“We don't support a reoccupation of Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces. We do think that there needs to be a healthy set of conversations about what post-conflict Gaza looks like and what governance looks like. What we absolutely agree with our Israeli counterparts on is what it can't look like, and it can't look like it looked on October 6.”

Biden had previously said it would be a "mistake" for Israel to occupy Gaza.

In the ABC News interview, Netanyahu said Israel “will, for an indefinite period will have the overall security responsibility because we've seen what happens when we don't have it.”

“When we don't have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn't imagine,” Netanyahu said.

A month into the war, Israel's military says it's fighting in the ‘depths’ of Gaza City after encircling the northern part of the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Several hundred thousand people are believed to remain in the north in the assault’s path. Hundreds of Palestinians fled Gaza City to the south on Tuesday, raising their hands and waving white flags to move past Israeli tanks.

Some came on donkey carts, most on foot, a few pushing aged relatives in wheelchairs, all visibly exhausted and many with nothing but their clothes on their back.

The Palestinian death toll in the war surpassed 10,300, including more than 4,200 children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.

In the occupied West Bank, more than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the violence and Israeli raids.

More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them in the October 7 Hamas attack that started the fighting, and 242 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.

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