US President Joe Biden said on Friday that calls to place specific conditions on aid to Israel are an “interesting idea” amid the war in Gaza, but he also hinted, in a press conference marking a four-day truce in the Gaza war, that these conditions could... Obstruct diplomacy.

“I think this is a worthwhile idea,” Biden said, “but I don’t think that if I had started with this, we would have gotten to where we are today.”

Biden is under enormous pressure from a growing group of Democrats who have criticized the Biden administration for its strong support for Israel in the conflict, despite the growing number of civilian casualties in Gaza.

Biden certainly did not support imposing stricter conditions on US aid to Israel. By contrast, he is urging Congress to pass a bill, currently tied up in partisan budget disagreements, that would provide Israel with $14 billion in emergency military aid.

But Biden's refusal to mock the idea of making aid conditional seemed like a marked break from his previous rhetoric. As a presidential candidate in 2019, Biden told the Wall Street Journal that taking advantage of US aid to Israel to limit settlement growth would be “outrageous.”

“The blank check approach must end,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont) wrote in a New York Times op-ed published on Wednesday. He added: “The United States must make clear that although we are friends of Israel, there are conditions to this friendship, and that we cannot be complicit in actions that violate international law.”

The Israeli war on Gaza has led to the death of more than 14,000 Palestinians so far, including more than 4,600 children, since it began early last month, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Biden said he repeatedly pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to better look into the lives of civilians in Gaza.

“I encouraged the prime minister to focus on trying to reduce casualties while trying to eliminate Hamas, which is an objectively legitimate use,” Biden said. “This is a difficult task.”

He continued: “I don’t know how long it will take.” He added: “My expectation and hope is that as we move forward, the rest of the Arab world and the region will also put pressure on all parties to slow this down and put an end to it as quickly as possible.”

Progressive Democrats pushed the Biden administration to call for a long-term ceasefire in the conflict because the Israeli military strategy puts many Palestinian civilians at risk. They were joined by hundreds of former Biden campaign staffers and sparked a split in the State Department.

In his op-ed this week, Sanders described the Israeli strategy as relying on “indiscriminate bombing.”

“The Netanyahu government, or hopefully a new Israeli government, must understand that not a single cent will come to Israel from the United States unless there is a fundamental change in their military and political positions,” Sanders said in the statement.

The United States already requires that all countries receiving military aid abide by international law. Progressives say this measure has been completely ignored in the case of Israel.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said the United States was applying conditions to “almost all other allies” but not Israel.

“The United States has a legal and moral responsibility to ensure that public resources do not facilitate gross violations of human rights and international law,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.