Biden flies in to storm as Gaza hospital blast sinks Jordan summit and ignites protests

A deadly blast at a hospital in Gaza City has upended US diplomatic efforts aimed at fending off the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and thrown a dark shadow over president Joe Biden’s imminent visit to the region.

Late on Tuesday, Jordan cancelled a summit in Amman in which Biden had been due to hold talks with King Abdullah, the Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. The cancellation came as the US president was leaving Washington for Israel for talks with Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday morning.

The Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, claimed that more than 500 people had been killed at the hospital which, if confirmed, would make it the deadliest single bombing of all the five wars Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza. An official from the Gaza civil defence said more than 300 people had been killed in the blast.

Hamas has blamed the blast on an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military has said the hospital was hit by a rocket barrage launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group. Islamic Jihad also denied responsibility.

In a statement late on Tuesday, Biden said he was “outraged” by the blast at the hospital and that he had directed his national security team to gather information about exactly what had happened.

The hospital explosion has become a lightning rod for anger across the region, sparking protests across the Middle East.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera the planned summit with Biden was cancelled because “there is no use in talking now about anything except stopping the war”.

Safadi said the meeting would be held at a time when the parties could agree to end the “war and the massacres against Palestinians”, blaming Israel with its military campaign for pushing the region to “the brink of the abyss”.

The White House later issued a statement, saying: “After consulting with King Abdullah II of Jordan and in light of the days of mourning announced by President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, President Biden will postpone his travel to Jordan and the planned meeting with these two leaders and President Sisi of Egypt.”

Abbas had earlier pulled out of the meeting, after declaring three days of national mourning. White House spokesperson John Kirby has told reporters on Air Force One that the “decision not to go to Jordan was mutual”.

Kirby added that Biden planned to speak to Sisi and Abbas by phone on his flight home to Washington on Wednesday evening. While in Tel Aviv the president will hold talks with Netanyahu and his war cabinet, and the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, as well as Israeli emergency service workers and family members of victims and hostages of the Hamas attack.

King Abdullah warned that Israel’s response following a deadly cross-border attack by Hamas on 7 October that killed and injured more than 1,300 Israelis went beyond the right of self-defence to collective punishment of Palestinian civilians.

It was hoped that Biden’s trip to Israel would help to rein in Israeli military operations in Gaza, which has been under constant bombardment while running out of water, food and medical supplies. The UN says more than 3,000 Palestinians have died in the days since the Hamas attack.

Kirby said the president would underline continuing US military support for Israel but would also “get a sense from the Israelis about the situation on the ground and, more critically, their objectives, their plans, their intentions in the days and weeks ahead”.

“And he’ll be asking some tough questions. He’ll be asking them as a friend – as a true friend of Israel, but he will be asking some questions of them,” he added.

Protests broke out across the West Bank after the hospital blast, and in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, demonstrators threw rocks at the Palestinian security forces who fired on the crowds with stun grenades.

The outpouring of anger against Israel also fuelled a large rally on Tuesday near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, where police used teargas to disperse several thousand protesters who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and demanded the government close the embassy and scrap a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel is widely unpopular among many citizens.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah called for a “day of rage” to coincide with Biden’s arrival to the region. Following Hezbollah’s call, hundreds of demonstrators scuffled with Lebanese security forces outside the US embassy outside Beirut.

Even before the blast at the Gaza hospital, the visit was a gamble for Biden in terms of his international reputation and his domestic standing before an election year. The US believed it had struck humanitarian agreements with Netanyahu’s government over the past two days but these did not come to fruition.

As a condition of Biden’s visit, Israel agreed to a humanitarian package which included corridors into Gaza for relief supplies and safe areas for Palestinian civilians. But on the eve of his arrival, the border with Egypt, where aid has been stockpiled, remained closed.

Convoys of lorries carrying emergency food water and medical supplies are waiting on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza waiting for the crossing point at Rafah to open, while Palestinians with foreign citizenship wait on the other side to leave the enclave. Egypt controls the border but requires Israeli agreement on what and who is allowed to pass through it.

By Tuesday evening, the gate had still not been opened, but the border post and nearby urban areas were hit by airstrikes. At least 49 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes that hit homes in Rafah and Khan Younis, Gaza’s interior ministry said.

Kirby said that Biden would use his visit to press the case for immediate humanitarian support for people in Gaza.

“We want to see it be able to be sustained – food, water, obviously, electrical power, medicine – all the things that the people of Gaza are going to continue to need as this conflict continues to go on,” he said. “So, he’ll make that case very, very clearly.”

Kirby added: “We’re optimistic that we’ll be able to get some humanitarian assistance in.”

The UN human rights office denounced the “appalling reports” of civilians being killed in southern Gaza where they had been told to flee for their own safety by the Israeli authorities. The office’s spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, appealed to Israel to avoid “indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks”.

Asked about airstrikes on Rafah, an Israeli military spokesperson, Lt Col Richard Hecht, said on Tuesday: “When we see a target, when we see something moving that is Hamas, we take care of it. It’s as simple as that.”

Israel has partly restored water supply to southern Gaza but the UN said it constituted only 4% of the normal flow into the territory. The lack of clean water and the presence of bodies under the rubble has brought fears of an epidemic. Hospitals are in a state of collapse in the absence of electricity and fuel for generators.