U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden called Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu’s han­dling of the war in Gaza a mis­take and called for his gov­ern­ment to flood the be­lea­guered ter­ri­to­ry with aid, ramp­ing up pres­sure on Is­rael to reach a cease-fire and widen­ing a rift be­tween the two staunch al­lies.

Pales­tini­ans in Gaza marked a mut­ed start to the Eid-ul-Fitr hol­i­day, with par­ents vis­it­ing the graves of sons and daugh­ters killed in the war. Af­ter morn­ing prayers, Mus­lims of­ten vis­it the rest­ing places of loved ones dur­ing the three-day fes­ti­val mark­ing the end of the holy fast­ing month of Ra­madan.

At a ceme­tery in the cen­tral Gaza city of Deir al-Bal­ah, Samahir Za’neen crouched over the tomb­stone of her 20-year-old son, who was killed in an airstrike in Jan­u­ary while walk­ing in the city. “His Eid (is) in par­adise, God will­ing,” she said.

Biden has been an out­spo­ken sup­port­er of Is­rael’s war against Hamas since the mil­i­tant group launched a dead­ly as­sault on Oct. 7. But in re­cent weeks his pa­tience with Ne­tanyahu has ap­peared to be wan­ing and his ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en a more stern line with Is­rael, rat­tling the coun­tries’ decades-old al­liance and deep­en­ing Is­rael’s in­ter­na­tion­al iso­la­tion over the war.

The most se­ri­ous dis­agree­ment has been over Is­rael’s plans for an of­fen­sive in the south­ern­most Gaza city of Rafah and the rift has spi­ralled since, wors­ened by an Is­raeli airstrike last week on an aid con­voy, which killed sev­en work­ers with the food char­i­ty World Cen­tral Kitchen, most of them for­eign­ers. Is­rael said the deaths were un­in­ten­tion­al but Biden was out­raged.

Biden’s com­ments, made in an in­ter­view that aired late Tues­day af­ter be­ing record­ed two days af­ter the WCK strike, high­light the dif­fer­ences be­tween Is­rael and the U.S. over hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to peo­ple in Gaza, where a month­s­long war has led to warn­ings of im­mi­nent famine.

“What he’s do­ing is a mis­take. I don’t agree with his ap­proach,” Biden told Span­ish-lan­guage broad­cast­er Uni­vi­sion.

He was re­spond­ing to be­ing asked if Ne­tanyahu is pri­or­i­tiz­ing his po­lit­i­cal sur­vival over the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

Biden said Is­rael should agree to a cease-fire, flood be­lea­guered Gaza with aid for the next six to eight weeks and al­low oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion to help dis­trib­ute the aid. “It should be done now,” he said.

Hunger in Gaza is over­shad­ow­ing the Mus­lim hol­i­day of Eid-ul-Fitr, a typ­i­cal­ly joy­ous fes­ti­val dur­ing which fam­i­lies cel­e­brate the end of Ra­madan.

Is­rael halt­ed aid de­liv­er­ies to Gaza in the ear­ly days of the war, but un­der U.S. pres­sure has slow­ly in­creased trucks al­lowed to en­ter the ter­ri­to­ry. Still, aid groups have com­plained that sup­plies are not reach­ing des­per­ate peo­ple quick­ly enough, blam­ing Is­raeli re­stric­tions, and coun­tries have at­tempt­ed oth­er ways to de­liv­er them in­clud­ing air­drops and by sea.

Is­rael says it has steadi­ly ramped up aid through­out the war, open­ing up more en­try points for trucks to en­ter and to reach es­pe­cial­ly hard-hit ar­eas like north­ern Gaza, an ear­ly tar­get of Is­rael’s in the war.

Is­rael blames aid groups for be­ing too slow to de­liv­er aid once it’s in­side Gaza. Those groups say lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues and the pre­car­i­ous se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion — un­der­scored by the WCK strike — com­pli­cate aid de­liv­er­ies.

Is­rael and Hamas are cur­rent­ly en­gaged in talks meant to bring about a cease-fire in ex­change for the re­lease of hostages cap­tured by Hamas and oth­ers who stormed across the bor­der on Oct. 7. But the sides re­main far apart on key is­sues, in­clud­ing the re­turn of Pales­tini­ans to hard-hit north­ern Gaza. Ne­tanyahu’s Se­cu­ri­ty Cab­i­net met late Tues­day to dis­cuss the hostage ne­go­ti­a­tions but did not ap­pear to make any de­ci­sions.

Ne­tanyahu has vowed to achieve “to­tal vic­to­ry” in the war, pledg­ing to de­stroy Hamas’ mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties to pre­vent a re­peat of the Oct. 7 at­tacks and to re­turn the hostages. He says that vic­to­ry must in­clude an of­fen­sive in Rafah, which Is­rael says is Hamas’ last ma­jor strong­hold, but more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple are cur­rent­ly seek­ing shel­ter there.

Six months in­to the war, Is­rael is grow­ing ever more iso­lat­ed, with even its clos­est part­ner in­creas­ing­ly vo­cal about its dis­con­tent in the war’s di­rec­tion and long­time trad­ing part­ners like Turkey tak­ing po­ten­tial­ly painful eco­nom­ic steps to ex­press dis­may.

Ne­tanyahu, who is on tri­al for al­leged cor­rup­tion, is un­der pres­sure to de­cide on a post­war vi­sion for Gaza. But crit­ics say he is de­lay­ing be­cause he doesn’t want to anger his ul­tra­na­tion­al­ist gov­ern­ing part­ners, who sup­port re­set­tling the Gaza Strip, which Is­rael with­drew from in 2005 and an idea Ne­tanyahu has ruled out.

Ne­tanyahu’s gov­ern­ing part­ners al­so op­pose mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sions to Hamas in the on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions. They have threat­ened to ex­it the gov­ern­ment -- a step that would cause the rul­ing coali­tion to col­lapse and trig­ger new elec­tions.

“If the prime min­is­ter thinks that there’s go­ing to be a reck­less deal here, it isn’t go­ing to pass,” Limor Sonn Har Melech, a law­mak­er in the hard-line Jew­ish Pow­er par­ty, said in an in­ter­view with an Is­raeli ra­dio sta­tion. “If we re­al­ize that the mean­ing of stop­ping this war is ca­pit­u­la­tion to Hamas, we won’t be there.”

Is­rael launched the war in re­sponse to Hamas’ cross-bor­der as­sault, where mil­i­tants killed 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and took rough­ly 250 peo­ple hostage, ac­cord­ing to Is­raeli au­thor­i­ties.

More than 33,200 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in the re­lent­less fight­ing, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry which doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its count but says most of the dead are women and chil­dren. Is­rael says it has killed some 12,000 mil­i­tants, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence.

The war has ig­nit­ed a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cat­a­stro­phe. Most of the ter­ri­to­ry’s pop­u­la­tion has been dis­placed and with vast swaths of Gaza’s ur­ban land­scape lev­elled in the fight­ing, many ar­eas are un­in­hab­it­able.

Shu­rafa re­port­ed from Deir al-Bal­ah, Gaza Strip. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Josef Fe­d­er­man in Jerusalem con­tributed to this re­port.

TEL AVIV, Is­rael (AP) —