By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

During a long-awaited phone call, US President Joe Biden defended Israel’s right to respond to Iran and Hezbollah.

US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed in a long-awaited call Tel Aviv’s anticipated response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel on October 1, the White House said on Wednesday.

“They continued their discussion on a response to Iran’s attack last week, a discussion that certainly started at the staff level, and now the two leaders were able to have a productive, straightforward, honest conversation, as they tend to do,” spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said according to Anadolu news agency.

US Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly participated in the conversation between the two, which took place Wednesday morning and was followed by a readout by the White House hours later.   

The readout stated that Biden emphasized to Netanyahu his “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security”, while condemning “unequivocally Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel.”

Iran launched a massive missile attack on Israel on October 1, in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil in July and the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last month.

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While Israel vowed to retaliate the Iranian missile attack, Iran has warned Tel Aviv against such a move stressing that its response will be decisive in this case.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant threatened on Wednesday Iran with a “lethal, precise, and especially surprising” retaliation.

“They won’t understand what happened or how it happened, but they’ll see the result,” Gallant stated. 

Israel’s War on Lebanon

Biden and Netanyahu touched on a number of issues during the thirty-minute phone call, one of which was Israel’s war on Lebanon.

The White House readout indicated that Biden affirmed to Netanyahu Israel’s “right to protect its citizens from Hezbollah,” which he said “fired thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel over the past year alone,” stressing at the same time the need to minimize civilian harm, especially in densely populated Beirut.  

The US president emphasized as well “the need for a diplomatic arrangement to safely return both Lebanese and Israeli civilians to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line,” Anadolu reported.

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Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre rejected earlier Netanyahu’s threat against Lebanon that it will witness “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza” if the Lebanese people do not oust Hezbollah, according to Anadolu.

“We cannot and will not see Lebanon turned into another Gaza. That is not what we want to see,” she was quoted by Anadolu as saying during the press brief.

“The suffering in both Gaza and Lebanon adds even greater urgency, as you’ve heard from us, to our efforts, certainly to end the conflicts and lay a foundation for lasting peace and security in the region,” Jean-Pierre reportedly added.

Swap Deal

The phone call between Biden and Netanyahu also touched on Israel’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip in which “the leaders discussed the urgent need to renew diplomacy to release the hostages held by Hamas,” the White House readout said. 

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“The President also discussed the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the imperative to restore access to the north, including by reinvigorating the corridor from Jordan immediately,” it added. 

The White House said that both men agreed on staying in close contact in the coming days either directly or through their national security teams.

Gallant’s Trip’s Blocked

The phone call between Biden and Netanyahu came a day after the Israeli prime minister blocked his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s visit to the US on condition he speak with the US President first on his country’s response to Iran’s missile attack.

Gallant canceled on Wednesday his planned trip to the United States amid Israeli media reports that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to speak first with American President Joe Biden, Reuters news agency reported.

According to Reuters, the Pentagon announced the cancelation of the visit but refrained to comment on the topic referring reporters to Israel’s Defense Ministry.

‘There is No Point’ – Netanyahu Blocks Gallant’s Trip to Washington

The Times of Israel said that the planned visit was postponed hours before the departure of Gallant because Netanyahu “set last-minute conditions for his approval of the visit.”

The Israeli newspaper cited several Israeli reports that indicated that Netanyahu blocked Gallant’s visit “because he wanted to speak with US President Joe Biden about Israel’s planned retaliation against Iran before the defense minister departed.”

According to the same paper, a report by Israel’s Channel 12 news indicated that the Israeli prime minister “was also conditioning the trip on the security cabinet first approving Israel’s planned response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack last week.”

(PC, Anadolu)