Joe Biden said Benjamin Netanyahu's approach to the war in Gaza was "hurting Israel more than helping Israel" in an interview aired Saturday, as the US leader's impatience with his Israeli counterpart grows increasingly visible.

US President Joe Biden made contradictory remarks on whether there is a 'red line' over Israel's threatened offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah

With Gaza's humanitarian crisis growing more dire and Biden's left flank in uproar, the US president made contradictory remarks as to the question of a "red line" over Israel's threatened offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza.

Netanyahu "has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas," Biden said, but added that "he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken."

"In my view he is hurting Israel more than helping Israel," he said.

As to Israel's potential invasion of Rafah, where some 1.5 million of the territory's 2.4 million residents are now crammed, Biden was ambiguous.

"It is a red line," the 81-year-old Democrat said, immediately adding: "I am never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical.

"There is no red line (in which) I want to cut off all weapons so they don't have the Iron Dome (air defense system) to protect them."

He then once again countered that there were in fact "red lines... You cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead."

After Biden's State of the Union address Thursday, he was caught on a hot mic stating that he'd told Netanyahu they would need to have a "come to Jesus" meeting, an American expression that refers to a dramatic realization that one must correct course.

Despite Biden's shift in tone, his administration has given short shrift to activist calls to cut the billions of dollars in military aid the United States sends to Israel.

Gaza has faced relentless bombardment by Israel since Hamas launched a shocking cross-border attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians, according to official figures.

Hamas also seized about 250 hostages, 99 of whom are believed by Israel to remain alive in Gaza.

Israel's retaliatory operations in Hamas-controlled Gaza have killed more than 30,800 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory's health ministry.

Biden was evasive Saturday on the possibility of a new trip to Israel, which he visited in October shortly after the deadly Hamas attack, and which included a speech to lawmakers.

Asked if it was something he would do again, Biden responded "yes" but declined to say whether he was invited.

No Women's Day in Gaza, say mothers of hungry children

Women's Day? At a tent in Rafah where Um Zaki said she was boiling porridge on an open flame to stave off the hunger of her six children, the holiday passed as a cruel joke.

"Now, all our days look the same. The days of feasts, happy occasions, nice food, laughter and hope, are all gone because of the war," she told Reuters by phone. "What is Women's Day? We are deprived of the minimal rights, we are deprived of living. Every day women die by Israeli bombs."

International Women's Day, March 8, is typically a major public holiday in the Palestinian territories, when Gaza families put on their finest clothes and flock to hotels and restaurants to celebrate their mothers, daughters and sisters.

Now, with Gaza's 2.3 million residents nearly all homeless and all struggling for survival, it was painful even to think of such things.

On a day she would normally wear makeup, her face was now streaked with soot from open air cooking fires, Um Zaki said. She started to tell of how her intimate laundry was strung outside the tent on a line for all to see. Another woman near her cried into the phone: "Women's Day! There is no Women's Day in Gaza. In Gaza we are close to Doomsday because of Israel!"

In a statement to mark the holiday, the Gaza health ministry said 60,000 pregnant women in the enclave were suffering from dehydration and malnutrition.

"Five thousand pregnant women give birth each month in Gaza amid harsh, insecure, and unhealthy conditions because of the bombardment and displacement," the statement said.

Health officials in Gaza say nearly 9,000 of the 30,878 people confirmed killed in Israel's offensive were women, and another 13,000 are children of both sexes. Many thousands more are believed to be dead under the rubble.

With acute hunger now spreading across the enclave and virtually no food available, mothers and small children are the most vulnerable.

Though the crisis has not yet lasted long enough for starvation to kill the huge numbers associated with famine, it is already the most widespread hunger emergency ever witnessed by the IPC, an international body tasked with assessing famine.

The IPC reported last month that Gaza was already experiencing "the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity the IPC has ever classified for any given area or country".

The U.N. Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, noted on X that the death toll meant 63 women were being killed in Gaza on average per day, 37 of them mothers.

The Israeli military says it does everything possible to minimize harm to civilians, and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

Israel says it is not limiting the entry of aid into Gaza, and blames shortfalls on UN agencies charged with distributing aid. They say they cannot do so in a war zone where civil administration has collapsed, and that Israeli troops patrolling Gaza have a duty to ensure the safe delivery of food.