It is Netanyahu’s fourth speech to Congress – more than any other world leader. During his address, his far-right governing partners will want to hear his resolve to continue the war and topple Hamas.
The Biden administration will look for progress toward the latest US-backed ceasefire proposal and details on a postwar vision. Republicans hope Netanyahu besmirches Biden and bolsters the GOP’s hoped-for perception as Israel’s stalwart supporter.
Upon receiving the invitation, Netanyahu said he would “present the truth about our just war against those who seek to destroy us”.
Biden has had to walk a fine line of his own. He has faced harsh criticism from progressive Democrats and many Arab Americans. Even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking elected US Jewish official, lambasted Netanyahu in March for his handling of the war.
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 15 people, including women and children in Gaza, according to hospital officials and a body count by an Associated Press journalist on Sunday.
The already precarious humanitarian conditions inside besieged Gaza have worsened with the discovery of the polio virus as water and sanitation services have suffered for the territory’s population of 2.3 million, most of it displaced. Traces of the virus were found in sewage samples in Gaza. The World Health Organization has said no one had been treated for symptoms caused by the infection.
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Israel’s military said soldiers would be vaccinated, and it would work with organisations to bring in vaccines for Palestinians.
Israel’s latest airstrikes were in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, where nine people, including two children, were killed, and the southern city of Khan Younis, where at least six people were killed, including two girls. Men and women wept and embraced the small bodies in white shrouds.
Smoke also rose from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, but there was no immediate word on casualties.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 38,900 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 120 remain held, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
AP
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Source Agencies
