End Gaza war before US elections, Biden tells Netanyahu

President fears his support for Israel will cost him votes if the Palestian civilian death toll continues to rise

Joe Biden has reportedly urged Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza before the US election as he fears he may lose the votes of young Americans who disagree with his support for Israel.
The US president is understood to have told the Israeli leader during a telephone call last week that he must start scaling back his country’s operation in Gaza.
As Mr Biden prepares for what will most likely be a rematch with Donald Trump, a White House source told Axios, the American news website, that Mr Biden could not risk the growing Palestinian death toll dominating the headlines.
Nearly three-quarters of voters aged 18 to 29 said they disagreed with the way Mr Biden was handling the conflict, according to last month’s New York Times/Siena College poll.
At least a third of the 40-minute phone call between Mr Biden and Mr Netanyahu on January 19 was spent discussing Israel’s strategy, two US officials said. 
The Democrat leader is said to have urged Mr Netanyahu to transition to low-intensity operations to reduce civilian casualties.
Mr Biden pressed Mr Netanyahu about his plan several times and told him he did not understand the “end state” the Israeli leader hoped for, the sources added.
Mr Netanyahu reportedly replied that Israel had transitioned to low-intensity fighting in northern Gaza, but it was not ready to do so in the south and if the Israeli military left now Hamas would return.
Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu agreed to Mr Biden’s requests to allow a UN mission into northern Gaza to assess the conditions and flour to be moved into the enclave via the Israeli port of Ashdod.
He is also understood to have agreed to help improve the delivery of aid from Jordan through the Kerem Shalom border.
The leaders last held a call on Dec 23, when Mr Biden reportedly put down the phone in frustration, saying the “conversation is over”.
Christopher Galdieri, professor of politics at Saint Anselm’s College, said it “doesn’t surprise” him that Mr Biden was pressing for the war to end ahead of November 2024.
“We’ve seen that this is partly an issue that really divides Democrats along generational lines”, he told The Telegraph.
“Biden was elected in no small part because of such a high turnout amongst young voters in 2020 and because they broke decisively for him, if either of those things changes… that could definitely be damaging”.
The Telegraph has approached the White House for comment.