Biden, talking to reporters at a joint news conference on Wednesday, said that he is convinced that one of the reasons why Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel was because of the recent announcement during the G-20 Summit in New Delhi on the ambitious India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor that integrates the entire region with a network of railroad.
Responding to a question regarding Biden’s theory of the reason behind the Hamas’ attack on Israel, National Security Council’s Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said President Joe Biden had been “misunderstood”. “I think you misunderstood him. What he said was that he believed that the normalization process and the agreement that we were trying to reach between Israel and Saudi Arabia for normalization, which we believe is an important stepping stone to getting to a two-state solution, was what may have motivated Hamas to — to conduct those attacks. Biden told reporters at a joint news conference on Wednesday with the visiting Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, that his analysis is based on his instinct and does not have any proof for this.
“I’m convinced one of the reasons Hamas attacked when they did, and I have no proof of this, just my instinct tells me, is because of the progress we were making towards regional integration for Israel, and regional integration overall. We can’t leave that work behind,” Biden said. This was the second time in less than a week that Biden has mentioned the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC) as a potential reason for the terrorist attack by Hamas.
Israel has launched a massive counter-offensive against Hamas after unprecedented attacks by the militant group on October 7 killed more than 1,400 people.