Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the US Congress in Washington on July 24, a parliamentary source told AFP on Thursday.

Mr Netanyahu was invited in late May by Republican and Democratic leaders to address a joint session of the US House of Representatives amid the war on the Gaza Strip.

On Monday, American media reported that Mr. Netanyahu would go to deliver the speech this June 13. But the services of the Israeli prime minister denied this information within hours, explaining that the date “had not been finalized” yet.

The provocation came despite months of growing discontent in Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration over the way Israel’s armed forces are waging the war in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7. .

The US president has publicly and repeatedly expressed his opposition to a large-scale ground offensive in Rafah, where more than a million Palestinian civilians have been trapped, and has threatened to suspend deliveries of some US munitions to the Israeli military, particularly bombs, if it is not heeded. . His stance was strongly criticized in Washington, especially by Republicans, but also some Democrats, who accused Mr. Biden of abandoning the most important US ally in the Middle East.

The US government remains, however, Israel’s main supporter worldwide, both diplomatically and militarily. And this at a time when Israel is facing increasingly intense international pressure after eight months of war that caused a humanitarian disaster in the besieged and ruined Palestinian enclave.

Joe Biden thus described as “outrageous” the fact that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) requested the issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Minister of Defense of the government of Yoav Gallad – as well as three leaders of Hamas – for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In the letter inviting Benjamin Netanyahu, the four leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate assured that the US stands “with Israel in its fight against terrorism.”

In March, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer caused an uproar on the Israeli political scene by declaring that Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition government — the most right-wing of the establishment — was no longer responsive to “Israel’s needs after October 7.” ”, calling for new elections to be held.

In a statement released on Saturday, the head of the Israeli government said he was “very moved” to be given the “privilege” to speak before both houses of the US Congress and tell them “the truth” about the “just war we are waging against them who are trying to exterminate us.”