Biden to address nation on Israel-Hamas war and Ukraine

Oval Office address will be delivered at 8pm on Thursday

President Joe Biden will deliver a major address on the 10 day-old war between Israel and Hamas and Russia’s nearly two year-old war against Ukraine from the Oval Office on Thursday evening, the White House has said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement late Wednesday that Mr Biden would address the nation at 8pm ET to “discuss our response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and Russia’s ongoing brutal war against Ukraine”.

Mr Biden’s formal address to the nation will come less than a day after returning to the US from Israel, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet just 10 days after terror attacks by Hamas left more than 1,000 Israelis dead and scores taken captive by the militant group.

The president has rarely made use of the Oval Office format and has seldom asked for airtime to address Americans during the evening hours.

His most recent Oval Office address came in June of this year, when he spoke to Americans in prime time about the deal he’d reached with congressional Republicans to avoid a catastrophic default on America’s sovereign debt by raising the nation’s statutory debt ceiling.

Last year, he delivered planned remarks in prime time on several occasions, including a major televised speech on what the White House described at the time as “the continued battle for the soul of the nation” outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

During the first year of his presidency, Mr Biden spoke to Americans in prime time in March, less than two months after taking office, to mark the first anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But the remarks on Covid were delivered from the East Room, not from the Oval Office. And Mr Biden’s speech from Philadelphia was not covered in the same way as an Oval Office address by some news outlets because they deemed the content to be too political in the midst of the 2022 midterm election season.

The president’s planned remarks come as he is expected to ask Congress to consider legislation to fund continued defence aid to Ukraine as well as the “unprecedented” arms package he has pledged to ask Congress to authorise for Israel’s use against Hamas.

But Mr Biden’s plans may have to wait for half of Congress to get their own House in order, as the House of Representatives has been without a Speaker since a group of eight Republicans masterminded the ouster of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

No Republican has since been able to gain the requisite 217 votes needed to gain control of the Speaker’s gavel. And without a Speaker, the House cannot take up any legislation.