Joe Biden has sought to address anger on United States university campuses over his support for Israel amid the war in Gaza, as the US president delivered a graduation speech at a historically Black university attended by Martin Luther King Jr.

Biden’s graduation speech on Sunday at Morehouse College in Atlanta, in the election battleground state of Georgia, is aimed at encouraging Black and young voters to support him ahead of US elections in November.

“It’s a humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Biden said in his address on Sunday morning, adding that he is “working on a deal” to end the fighting and “build a lasting and durable peace”.

“Leadership is about fighting through the most intractable problem. It’s about channeling anger, frustration and heartbreak to find a solution. It’s about doing what you believe is right, even when it’s hard and lonely,” he said.

The US president is expected to face a tight election contest against his Republican rival and predecessor Donald Trump, and he is trying to appeal to key segments of his Democratic Party base.

But Biden has faced widespread anger – particularly from progressives, youth and Black and other voters of colour – over his unwavering support for Israel amid the Gaza war.

More than 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since the conflict began in early October.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from a protest for Gaza about 1km (less than a mile) from Morehouse College on Sunday morning, said the demonstrators believe Biden should not be giving the commencement address because of his Middle East policies.

Students had called on the school to cancel Biden’s speech over his support for Israel despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.

“Morehouse College has a history of social justice,” Fisher said.

“Its most famous alumnus is Dr Martin Luther King, who of course talked about how there should be equality throughout the world and how it was important that politicians did always what was right, rather than what brought them votes.”

Photos from the commencement ceremony, during which Biden received an honorary degree, showed students and faculty wearing keffiyehs. Some turned their backs to the US president as he spoke.

Morehouse College valedictorian DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher had a Palestinian flag affixed to his graduation cap. Fletcher on Sunday called for “an immediate and permanent ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip.

“Hear the people of this world, sing the song of righteous justice,” he said during his valedictorian speech.

The White House last week sent a senior official to meet students and faculty members at Morehouse to discuss the objections to Biden’s speech, according to US broadcaster NBC News.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday said Biden sought to use the speech as “an opportunity to lift up and to give an important message to our future leaders”.

Bernice King, the civil icon’s daughter, told Bloomberg in an interview last week that Black voters are “very disgruntled right now with the president” and that Biden risks losing a considerable share of their votes.

The civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had said Biden should not speak at Morehouse.

“His team should have made the decision that this is not the right time to take the spotlight from Morehouse students to the president and his bad policy on Gaza,” CAIR’s Edward Ahmed Mitchell said.

The controversy over the Morehouse speech came after weeks of major protests at US universities, including the Atlanta college, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from Israel.

Biden said earlier this month that “order must prevail” on campuses, and police have made thousands of arrests across the US while attacking student encampments.

Protesters were arrested during a violent police crackdown in New York’s Brooklyn on Saturday, while hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Washington, DC to demand an end to bloodshed in Gaza and the arming of Israel by the US.

The protests, which have spread globally, are continuing amid the Israeli ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, along with a deadly incursion into Jabalia in the north.

Meanwhile, Israel is allowing very little aid into the enclave, and the US is proceeding with a much-criticised plan to deliver humanitarian assistance via a temporary floating pier.

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At their summit held during Kishida’s state visit to the United States, the first by a Japanese premier in nine years, the two leaders also confirmed they will join hands to boost defense relations and supply chains for semiconductors and other crucial products to tackle China’s regional military and economic clout.

Kishida said he reaffirmed with Biden the significance of the bilateral alliance while trying to pitch a “global partnership” between Tokyo and Washington as geopolitical tensions rise across the world amid China’s military buildup and North Korea’s nuclear and missile development.

“We are therefore working together, across all domains and at all levels, to build a global partnership that is fit for purpose to address the complex, interconnected challenges of today and tomorrow for the benefit of our two countries and the world,” the leaders said in a joint statement.

Ahead of the summit, a welcome ceremony took place at the White House. After their meeting, Kishida and Biden held a joint press conference and released statements before the president hosts an official dinner party.

Kishida and his wife Yuko on Tuesday night attended an informal dinner with Biden at a restaurant in Washington. Biden posted a picture of himself and the prime minister sharing a ride in the presidential limousine, known as “The Beast.”

Biden said at the arrival ceremony that the U.S.-Japan alliance is “truly a global partnership” for peace, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and around the world, adding, “Now our two countries are building a stronger defense partnership.”

Kishida said Japan and the United States will “take the lead” in addressing global challenges, while looking “10 years and also 100 years ahead” in developing ties.

At the outset of their summit, which was open to the media, Biden told Kishida that the U.S.-Japan alliance has become stronger than ever in history.

Kishida said Japan and the United States are “now at the forefront” in maintaining a free and open international order, adding that the two nations are “indispensable” to each other in driving sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

On the security front, Kishida and Biden confirmed deeper cooperation between the U.S. military and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces as threats posed by China and North Korea escalate.

Japan is set to establish a joint headquarters to command its ground, maritime and air forces by the end of March 2025. The United States is arranging to strengthen the functions of its command headquarters in Japan in line with the move, government officials said.

Kishida and Biden also agreed to pave the way for jointly developing key defense equipment so the decades-old alliance between the United States and Japan can enter a new stage to underpin stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

The leaders, meanwhile, pledged to create a framework so that Japanese private companies can undertake extensive repairs of U.S. Navy warships, enabling the vessels to operate for longer without returning home for maintenance.

Japan and the United States are likely to flesh out details of the summit agreements at two-plus-two talks involving their defense and foreign ministers in the near future, the officials said.

Kishida and Biden also made a commitment to reinforce supply chains, with some democracies adversely affected by what the United States calls “economic coercion” by authoritarian countries.

In the space field, Kishida and Biden agreed on shared goals regarding the U.S.-led lunar exploration Artemis program, which could see a Japanese astronaut become the first non-American to travel to the Moon.

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The two heads of state considered their phone conversation to be “candid and constructive”, according to a news release from the Foreign Ministry after the phone talk. The phone call was their latest interaction after exchanging congratulations on the 45th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries on Jan 1.

Xi said that the stabilizing trend of bilateral ties in recent months has been welcomed by both societies and the international community. On the other hand, there has been an increase in negative factors that require attention from both sides, he added.

Xi stressed that the issue of strategic perception is always fundamental to the China-U.S. relationship, just like the first button of a shirt that must be put right.

Two big countries like China and the U.S. should not cut off their ties or turn their backs on each other, still less slide into conflict or confrontation, he said. The two countries should respect each other, coexist in peace and pursue win-win cooperation, he added, and the relationship should continue moving forward in a stable, sound and sustainable way, rather than going backward.

As for the development of the China-U.S. relationship this year, Xi stressed holding on to the bottom line of nonconflict and nonconfrontation, and maintaining the overall stability of bilateral ties by refraining from setting the relationship back, provoking incidents or overstepping boundaries.

The two countries should also fulfill their respective commitments with actions, thus transforming the San Francisco vision into reality, Xi said.

The Chinese president reiterated that the Taiwan question is the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations.

It is hoped that the U.S. side will take real actions to honor Biden’s commitment of not supporting “Taiwan independence”, he said.

According to Xi, the U.S. is creating risks, instead of “de-risking” as it claims, by adopting endless measures to suppress China’s trade and technology sectors with a growing list of sanctions against Chinese enterprises.

If the U.S. is willing to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation with China and share in the dividends of China’s development, the door is always open, Xi said. However, if the U.S. insists on suppressing China’s high-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate development rights, the Chinese side will not stand idly by, he said.

Xi also elaborated China’s positions on issues concerning the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, human rights and the South China Sea, among others.

According to the Foreign Ministry news release, Biden said that the progress in bilateral ties so far demonstrates that the two sides are able to actively advance cooperation while managing their differences in a responsible way.

He reiterated the commitment to the “five noes”: that the U.S. does not seek a new Cold War with China, it does not aim to change China’s system, the revitalization of its alliances is not targeted at China, it does not support “Taiwan independence”, and it has no intention to seek a conflict with China.

Biden also said that the U.S. adheres to the one-China policy, China’s development is beneficial to the world, and the U.S. does not seek to contain China’s development or to “decouple” from China.

The U.S. president also said that the U.S. will send U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to visit China in the near future.

The two heads of state exchanged views on the Ukraine crisis and the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

They also agreed to instruct the working teams from the two sides to step up efforts to implement the San Francisco vision, push forward consultation mechanisms in fields such as diplomacy, economy, finance and commerce, as well as military-to-military communication, and conduct dialogue and cooperation in areas including anti-drug efforts, artificial intelligence and climate change.

Consensus was also reached in taking further measures to expand people-to-people exchanges and strengthen communication on global and regional issues.

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Biden had written to felicitate PM Shehbaz on Friday, assuring that Washington would continue to stand with Pakistan to tackle “the most pressing global and regional challenges”. In his first communication with the new administration, the US president had noted that the “enduring partnership between our nations remains critical to ensuring the security of our people — and people around the world”.

Interestingly, Biden had not had a similar communication with former prime minister Imran Khan when the US president assumed office.

In his response to the US president’s letter today, released by the Prime Minister’s Office, the premier said: “Pakistan is willing to work with the US towards a common goal of global peace and security and development and prosperity of the region.”

He said Pakistan attached “key importance” to its relations with the US, adding that the two countries were jointly working together on important initiatives regarding energy, climate change, agriculture, health and education sectors.

PM Shehbaz said that cooperation in the energy sector and Green Alliance Framework initiative between the two countries was welcome.

Experts had noted that Biden’s letter did not congratulate PM Shehbaz for assuming power or winning the election.

At a recent Congressional hearing, senior US diplomat Donald Lu had been asked whether Washington recognised the new government in Pakistan.

The question, posed by Representative Tim Burchett, was based on allegations of rigging and reports of irregularities in the recent February 8 elections. US lawmakers and the State Department have repeatedly called for a thorough probe into the claims, while Lu suggested that the Election Commission of Pakistan may want to “re-do” some of the contests.

However, in his response at the time, Lu had clarified that the “US does not go around recognising new governments”, rather it just worked with the regime in power at the time.

Last month, a cohort of US Democratic lawmakers had written to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging them to refrain from recognising the new government in Pakistan until allegations of election rigging were thoroughly investigated.

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But underdog candidate Nikki Haley denied Trump a clean sweep on the Republican side with her victory in the small northeastern state of Vermont, where she resonated with moderate voters.

The result offered a glimmer of hope for Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor. Haley has long trailed Trump in national and state-level polls. Her victory in Vermont, however, comes on the heels of her win in Sunday’s Republican primary in Washington, DC — two results that may fuel her long-shot campaign to continue chugging along.

Likewise, Biden faced protests at the ballot box over his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza. He also suffered a relatively minor loss in the US territory of American Samoa.

Super Tuesday marks the most pivotal date on the primary calendar, as the day when the most states vote. They included the two most populous — California and Texas — as well as battleground states like Minnesota and Virginia.

As a result, nearly a third of all party delegates for both Democrats and Republicans were up for grabs. While the night’s results were not enough for Trump or Biden to clinch their party’s nominations, they have both made significant strides in reaching the delegate threshold needed. A rematch of their match-up in the 2020 presidential race appears all but certain.

Here are five takeaways from the 2024 Super Tuesday results.

Supporters cheer as Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley at a campaign event in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 4 [Shelby Tauber/Reuters]

Haley wins big in Vermont

Super Tuesday has long been the bullseye that the Haley campaign has been aiming for.

“That’s as far as I’ve thought, in terms of going forward,” she said during the South Carolina primary, a race in her home state that she ultimately lost.

But she pledged to keep going, and her efforts were rewarded on Super Tuesday with a key symbolic victory in Vermont, a state in the left-leaning New England region.

Her campaign, however, still faces questions about its longevity: Donors like the Americans for Prosperity super PAC stepped away from her presidential bid in the wake of her defeat in South Carolina.

Michael Fauntroy, a political science professor at George Mason University, told Al Jazeera that Haley’s Super Tuesday performance might be less significant as a reflection of her success — and more indicative of the weaknesses Trump faces going into the general election.

“If you look at many of the closely contested swing states that we’ve seen so far, including some tonight, there are roughly 20 percent to maybe even a third of Republican voters in those states who are voting for Nikki Haley,” he said.

“And in a closely contested state like Michigan or Wisconsin, perhaps even North Carolina, if those voters stay home in November or just can’t bring themselves to vote for former President Trump, then former President Trump cannot win those states. And if he can’t win those states, he can’t win the election.”

Two of the most populous states, including California, cast ballots in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5 [Loren Elliott/Reuters]

Protest vote against Biden spreads

Super Tuesday has likewise forced Biden to confront the vulnerabilities in his campaign. A protest campaign that started largely in Michigan continued to exert influence over the day’s races.

In last month’s Michigan primary, grassroots movements called on voters to choose the “uncommitted” option on their ballot instead of Biden, as a rebuke to his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden has long touted his “rock-solid” support for Israel, even as its military offensive in the Palestinian enclave elicited concerns about the risk of genocide and famine. More than 30,000 Palestinians have died in Israel’s military campaign so far.

The “uncommitted” movement ultimately pulled an estimated 101,000 votes in the Michigan primary — or approximately 13 percent of the total ballots cast.

The push to vote “uncommitted” remained strong on Super Tuesday. That was particularly apparent in Minnesota, a key swing state in the Midwest. Early results showed that “uncommitted” was in second place in that state’s Democratic primary, with nearly 20 percent of the vote.

That could spell trouble for Biden in the general elections, as he faces drooping poll numbers — and a tight race against his likely opponent Trump.

US Representative Adam Schiff celebrates his win in California’s ‘jungle primary’ at the Avalon Theater in Los Angeles, California, on March 5 [Aude Guerrucci/Reuters]

Senate race in California deals blow to progressives

One of the biggest down-ballot primaries was the race to replace the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, who passed away last year after more than three decades representing California.

To decide which two candidates would proceed to the general elections in November, California held a “jungle primary”, where Senate hopefuls from any party could participate. It proved to be a fatal contest for the race’s two most prominent progressives, Representatives Barbara Lee and Katie Porter.

Both women had decided against running for re-election to the House of Representatives in order to compete in the Senate race. It was a high-stakes gamble. The two representatives had developed national profiles, Lee as an antiwar figure and Porter as a champion against corporate overreach.

Their fellow US representative, centrist Democrat Adam Schiff, handily emerged as the frontrunner on Super Tuesday, despite criticism for his pro-Israel stance amid the Gaza war. But Lee and Porter were ultimately edged out by a Republican with no previous political experience: former baseball player Steve Garvey.

The result has left their political careers in question — and Porter’s congressional district vulnerable to being flipped. Control of both the House and the Senate are up in the air this November.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump celebrated Super Tuesday with a results-watching party at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida [Marco Bello/Reuters]

A referendum on Trump’s grip over Republicans

Other hotly anticipated races revolved around gauging just how strong Trump’s sway over the Republican Party is.

In the Republican stronghold of Texas, for instance, one state-level race showed how fierce the internal power struggle has become.

Two-term state Representative Dade Phelan had gained a relatively high profile as Texas’s Speaker of the House — a powerful figure in the state’s politics — and this year, he was up for re-election.

But he had spurred the ire of the far-right flank of his party by overseeing the recent impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican provocateur known for challenging the Biden administration in the courts. Paxton had also previously petitioned the US Supreme Court to reject Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, in support of Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

In the Super Tuesday primary, Phelan came to represent the more establishment branch of the Republican Party, while his adversary David Covey enjoyed the endorsements of Trump and Paxton.

The Republican race was so close, however, that it is set to go to a runoff in May, teeing up another battle for the soul of the party.

Rapper Forgiato Blow wears a necklace with a face representative of Donald Trump at an election watch party in Florida [Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo]

Biden and Trump look ahead to November showdown

Despite a wobble for Biden in American Samoa and a loss for Trump in Vermont, the two frontrunners seem destined for a rematch in November’s general elections.

They each offered a glimpse of their campaign strategies moving forward, with comments released in the midst of the Super Tuesday results.

Trump took the stage in person at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, greeting a ballroom full of supporters for an election-night watch party.

As he spoke, though, Trump revisited familiar themes: The United States was in decline, he said, and only he could reverse the slide. He made no mentions of Haley, his only major Republican rival left standing, focusing instead on Biden.

“He’s the worst president in the history of our country,” Trump said of Biden, blaming the Democratic incumbent for inflation, the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border and conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. “We’ve watched our country take a great beating over the last three years.”

Biden likewise returned to his familiar playbook, warning that Trump represented an existential threat to US democracy.

“My message to the country is this: Every generation of Americans will face a moment when it has to defend democracy,” Biden said in a Super Tuesday statement. A centrist, he framed himself as the candidate of unity, offering a preview of his appeal to voters in November.

“To every Democrat, Republican, and independent who believes in a free and fair America: This is our moment. This is our fight.”

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United States President Joe Biden has comfortably won South Carolina’s Democratic primary, promising afterwards that he would make Republican rival Donald Trump a loser for a second time in November’s election.

Biden on Saturday defeated the other long-shot Democrats on South Carolina’s ballot, including Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, notching an overwhelming victory in the state that vaulted him to the White House in 2020.

Kicking off his march to the party’s nomination, Biden secured a massive 96.4 percent of the votes in the first Democratic primary of the 2024 presidential race, US media reports said.

Democrats will now pore over the results to see how well the 81-year-old incumbent, battling low approval ratings, mobilised the Black voters who helped propel him to the White House against Trump, 77, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in the election.

‘Donald Trump a loser’

As the results came in, Biden was at a campaign event in California, as he turned his attention to the next steps in his fight for re-election.

“Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the presidency again – and making Donald Trump a loser – again,” Biden said in a statement.

He urged people to get out and vote in November, saying the stakes “could not be higher” if Trump manages a sensational comeback to the Oval Office.

“There are extreme and dangerous voices at work in the country – led by Donald Trump,” he said.

Four years ago, it was South Carolina’s Black vote in the state’s primary that helped ignite Biden’s campaign and ultimately propel him to the White House.

Besides campaign fears that South Carolina’s heavily Black electorate might not be energised this time around, there were also doubts about his age and concerns about high consumer prices and security along the US-Mexican border.

Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison, left, addresses attendees at South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary [Meg Kinnard/AP]

South Carolina has not backed a Democrat for president in the general election since 1976. But because Black people make up the state’s more than half of the Democratic electorate, it presented an important test of Biden’s appeal with a voting base that typically supports Democrats nine-to-one in presidential races.

‘Least popular president’

Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at the advocacy group Independent Women’s Voice, said Biden’s victory in South Carolina does not guarantee him a lead in the presidential race.

“The reality is that this is just a primary and he is the incumbent president, so nobody ever thought he was actually going to lose. But the reality is that President Biden is the least popular president since World War II – that is truly shocking,” she told Al Jazeera.

“His approval ratings are only 33 percent. He is also losing in key battleground states that he won in 2020 against Donald Trump so he is losing overall across the seven battleground states by six points to Trump, and in North Carolina, it’s in double digits. No matter who wins the GOP primary, whether Donald Trump or Nikki Haley, both are beating Biden in the 2024 general election.”

Some South Carolina voters were also lukewarm about Biden’s re-election bid.

“Sometimes I wonder, is his presence enough because you don’t see him a lot, you don’t hear him a lot,” Martin Orr, a school administrator from McConnells, South Carolina, told The Associated Press news agency.

“Is it quiet because of his age or his physical condition, or what’s going on? I think that’s what a lot of people are concerned about right now,” Orr added.

Another issue that is dominating Biden’s re-election campaign is the domestic concerns over the war in Gaza.

For nearly four months now, Israel has been waging a “genocidal” campaign in Gaza, killing more than 27,200 people, displacing almost its entire population and triggering a widespread hunger and health crisis in the besieged enclave.

Israel’s latest campaign against Gaza started after Hamas fighters on October 7 stormed communities in southern Israel, killing more than 1,100 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 captives, nearly half of whom have since been released.

Michael Fauntroy, head of the Ronald Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center at Howard University, said Biden is walking “a fine line” as he tries to win Jewish votes while also trying to mediate for an end to the fighting inside Gaza.

“He seems to have been working very hard to get the Israelis to slow down and he has not publicly called for a ceasefire, but I think he understands that that is where the US policy will have to go,” Fauntroy told Al Jazeera.

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“I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over the entire area in the west of Jordan – and this is contrary to a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu posted on X late on Saturday night, doubling down his opposition to a Palestinian state a day after speaking to the US president, who has offered unconditional support to Israel in its war on Gaza Strip, in a phone call.

Biden on Friday said he spoke with Netanyahu about possible solutions for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, suggesting one path could involve a non-militarised government.

Biden’s call with Netanyahu was the first in nearly a month, the White House said. Asked if a two-state solution was “impossible” while Netanyahu was in office, Biden said, “No, it’s not.”

But in a statement, the Israeli prime minister’s office said Netanyahu told Biden that “after Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty”.

Netanyahu is under heat to appease members of his far-right ruling coalition by intensifying the war on the besieged Palestinian enclave, killing more than 165 people in the past 24 hours. Close to 25,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in relentless bombardment since October 7.

He expressed his opposition to any Palestinian state multiple times since launching the war on Gaza deferring to the Biden administration’s stance on the issue.

The UK said on Sunday that Netanyahu’s opposition to Palestinian sovereignty is “disappointing”.

“I think it’s disappointing actually, to hear that from the Israeli prime minister,” said Defence Secretary Grant Shapps on the Sky News channel.

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday said “the denial of the right to statehood for the Palestinian people” is “unacceptable”.

“The right of the Palestinian people to build their own state must be recognized by all,” he posted on X.

US-backed peace talks towards the so-called “two-state solution” that would see Israel existing side by side with a Palestinian state in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, collapsed a decade ago.

On Thursday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said there was no way to solve Israel’s long-term security challenges and the short-term challenges of rebuilding Gaza without the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Miller said Israel had an opportunity now as countries in the region were ready to give it security assurances.

‘Complete victory’

Netanyahu says Israel must fight until it achieves “complete victory” and Hamas no longer poses a threat but has not outlined how this will be accomplished. Hamas has been governing Gaza since 2007 when Israel imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the enclave of 2.3 million people.

But a member of Israel’s war cabinet, former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, has called a ceasefire the only way to secure the captives’ release, a comment that implied criticism of Israel’s current strategy.

Critics have accused Netanyahu of preventing a cabinet-level debate about a post-war scenario for Gaza. They say he is stalling to prevent conflict within his coalition. Netanyahu’s office called the claim that he was unnecessarily prolonging the war “utter nonsense”.

Israel launched its war on Gaza after the Hamas group’s unprecedented October 7 attacks that killed about 1,100 people, mostly civilians, in Israel and saw about 250 others taken captive.

In a sign of the pressures, Netanyahu’s government faces at home, thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday, calling for new elections, and others demonstrated outside the prime minister’s house, joining families of the more than 100 remaining captives held by Hamas and other fighters.

They fear that Israel’s military activity further endangers captives’ lives.

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As the war in Gaza nears the end of its second week, analysts say United States President Joe Biden is increasingly acting like a wartime leader, offering a “performative” show of strength and support for Israel.

Biden visited Israel on Wednesday to back its military campaign in Gaza despite growing calls for a ceasefire.

“I’m here to tell you that terrorists will not win. Freedom will win,” Biden said in remarks reminiscent of the speeches of former President George W Bush after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Experts say Biden is attempting to appeal to his domestic audience ahead of the 2024 elections and dodge Republican criticisms that would frame him as “weak”.

George Bisharat, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, said Biden’s approach to the Gaza war — including the visit to Israel — has an “element of political performance”.

“This is ‘Sleepy Joe’ proving that he’s awake, that he’s an expert on foreign policy,” Bisharat told Al Jazeera, invoking former President Donald Trump’s nickname for Biden.

“Of course, most of the time, American voters don’t really care very much about foreign policy; they don’t vote on foreign policy grounds. But wartime is an exception. This, in a way, is an opportunity to kind of flex muscles without the actual concrete costs to American soldiers in particular.”

The conflict in Gaza began on October 7, when Hamas issued a surprise attack against Israel from the besieged Palestinian territory, killing more than 1,300 people and taking dozens captive.

Israel responded with a declaration of war the following day. It has since led a continuous bombing campaign that has killed at least 3,785 Palestinians, including hundreds of children in Gaza.

Analysts say Biden’s vocal solidarity for Israel stems in part from his personal affinity for the US ally. The president is a self-described Zionist and a lifelong Israel supporter.

But Biden’s decision to back Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has raised questions about previous pledges he made to center human rights in his foreign policy agenda.

‘Theatre’ of war

Washington has sent two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region in an effort to “deter” a wider conflict, should forces like Iran and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah consider intervening.

The US president also said in an interview with CBS News last week that Hamas must be eliminated, pledging to provide Israel with the military aid it needs to carry out its war.

Experts say an Israeli ground invasion to uproot Hamas from Gaza would come at an enormous cost for all the parties involved, especially Palestinian civilians.

And while it may be technically possible to defeat Hamas’s military wing, it will likely be much more difficult to extinguish the group’s political movement.

“What does this entail? How would you actually destroy Hamas? Can you?” said Osamah Khalil, a history professor at Syracuse University.

Khalil explained that door-to-door fighting in Gaza’s dense urban areas would not be easy for Israel, were it to attack Hamas with a ground invasion.

As analogies, he pointed to the setbacks Israel faced in Lebanon during its 2006 ground offensive, as well as the slow progress Russia has made in Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in 2022.

“You can see what Russia is having to deal with in Ukraine, and they have a much bigger military,” he said.

William Astore, a historian and retired lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, also highlighted the challenges of destroying the Palestinian group.

“You can reduce Hamas. You can kill as many soldiers as you can find, I suppose,” Astore told Al Jazeera.

“The question always is, at what price? And no, you can’t you can’t kill off Hamas because Hamas is more of an ideology. It’s not only a military force.”

So where does that leave the US policy of open-ended support for Israel?

For Khalil, there needs to be an “off-ramp” to stop the fighting, but he said in the immediate future — with Biden’s endorsement — the bombardment of Gaza is set to continue.

Analysts like Khalil also stress that US foreign policy cannot be separated from its politics at home. Biden is already facing Republican accusations of being too lenient on Iran, Hamas’s ally.

So the White House has been pushing to reclaim the narrative and position Biden as a champion of Israel in its time of need.

Publicly released photos show Biden meeting with his top security aides to discuss the conflict, including in the Situation Room, an intelligence center at the White House.

“If you’re going to frame your reelection around Ukraine as a foreign policy aspect and then ‘the war and terrorism and supporting and saving Israel’, then you’re going to want to show this active, vital president who’s making decisions and is in full-on commander-in-chief mode,” Khalil said.

Astore, the historian, echoed that take.

“It’s theatre. I would say the primary audience is domestic, here in the United States,” Astore said.

“We know obviously that President Biden faces reelection next year and that his opponent may be Donald Trump. So what Biden is attempting to do is to show that Israel has no better friend than Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.”

No ceasefire

Regardless of Biden’s calculus, advocates say his refusal to call for a ceasefire is a sign of leadership failure. On Wednesday, Washington vetoed a United Nations Security Council proposal that would have called for a humanitarian pause to the war.

Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, characterized Biden’s recent visit to Israel as a lost opportunity.

“Any visit that did not include a public call for a ceasefire essentially amounts to an endorsement of the continuing Israeli attacks on Gaza,” she said.

Bennis added that the US president’s “bear-hug diplomacy” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes his vague references to international law fall flat.

“You don’t live by the rules of terrorists. You live by the rule of law.  And when conflicts flare, you live by the law of wars,” Biden told Israelis in an address on Wednesday.

A day later, UN experts warned that by cutting off water to Gaza and targeting civilian infrastructure, Israel is violating international law.

“We are sounding the alarm: There is an ongoing campaign by Israel resulting in crimes against humanity in Gaza,”  the experts said.

“Considering statements made by Israeli political leaders and their allies, accompanied by military action in Gaza and escalation of arrests and killing in the West Bank, there is also a risk of genocide against the Palestine people.”

But Biden has sought to distance the current war from the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, avoiding public remarks on the history of violence and displacement Palestinians have faced. Rights groups like Amnesty International have previously accused Israel of imposing apartheid on Palestinians.

And while in Israel, Biden pledged to push forward with efforts to establish ties between Israel and Arab states independently of the Palestinian file.

“I think US policy is to support at the moment whatever Israel is trying to accomplish, however realistic or unrealistic that may be,” Bennis told Al Jazeera.

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Several members of the Five Eyes – an intelligence-sharing network that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US – raised the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar directly with Modi, the newspaper reported on Thursday, citing three people familiar with discussions at the G20.

Biden and other leaders made their concerns known at the summit after Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged allies to intervene directly with Modi, the newspaper reported.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the FT’s report, according to the Reuters news agency, but a spokesperson said on Thursday that the US was deeply concerned by the allegations.

India has rejected Canada’s claims of official involvement in the killing, calling the allegations “absurd”.

India’s foreign ministry has said that Canada had not shared any specific information about the murder of Nijjar, 45, who was gunned down outside a Sikh temple he led in the city of Surrey in Canada’s province of British Columbia in June.

Nijjar, a plumber who was born in India but became a Canadian citizen in 2007, was a vocal supporter of a Sikh homeland in India in the form of an independent Khalistani state and was designated a “terrorist” by Indian authorities in July 2020.

At the time of his killing, Nijjar was attempting to organize an unofficial Sikh diaspora referendum on independence from India.

The Associated Press reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter, that the allegation of India’s involvement in the killing of Nijjar was based on human and surveillance intelligence, including signals intelligence of Indian diplomats in Canada.

The Canadian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, did not say which member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance provided some of the intelligence on the Indian diplomats nor did they give any specific details of what was contained in the intelligence.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) first reported details of the intelligence on Thursday. The CBC, citing Canadian sources, also reported that no Indian official, when pressed behind closed doors, has denied the allegation that there is evidence suggesting Indian government involvement in Nijjar’s death.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the CBC report.

‘Deep concerns about the allegations’

Trudeau’s allegations were followed by each country expelling a diplomat. The growing dispute has also put some Western countries in a difficult position as Canada has been their longstanding partner and ally while, at the same time, the US and others in the West are seeking to build strong ties with New Delhi to counter the influence of China in the Asia Pacific region.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday that there was no “wedge” between the US and Canada over Ottawa’s allegations that India had a hand in the killing of Nijjar.

“I have seen in the press some efforts to try to drive a wedge between the United States and Canada on this issue,” Sullivan said.

“I firmly reject the idea that there is a wedge between the US and Canada,” he told reporters, noting that “we have deep concerns about the allegations”.

On Thursday, the company that processes Indian visas in Canada announced that visa services had been suspended until further notice. The BLS Indian Visa Application Center gave no further details.

The suspension means Canadians – who are among the top visitors to India – will not be able to travel to India unless they have a visa already.

New Delhi’s anxieties about Sikh separatist groups in Canada have long been a strain on relations, but the two countries have maintained strong defense and trade ties and share strategic interests over China’s global ambitions.

In March, Modi’s government summoned the Canadian high commissioner in New Delhi, its top diplomat in the country, to complain about Sikh independence protests in Canada.

A Sikh uprising shook northern India in the 1970s and 1980s until it was crushed in a government crackdown in which thousands of people were killed, including prominent Sikh leaders.

While the uprising ended decades ago, the Indian government has warned that Sikh separatists are trying to stage a return.

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