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The president, who has known Netanyahu for more than 40 years and is a staunch supporter of Israel, has so far been largely reluctant to make his personal grievances public, the people said. But as Netanyahu continues to infuriate senior Biden officials by publicly humiliating him and immediately rejecting basic U.S. demands, Netanyahu is gradually coming to terms with the idea, according to the report. they said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has enraged U.S. officials multiple times in recent days. He publicly condemned the hostage deal while Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region to broker a deal. He announced that Israeli troops would move into Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, where approximately 1.4 million Palestinians who were evacuated on Israeli orders live in squalid conditions, and U.S. authorities have publicly criticized the move. is against.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said that Israel will not stop fighting in Gaza until it achieves “complete victory,” even as U.S. officials increasingly believe that Netanyahu’s goal of annihilating Hamas will be difficult to achieve. said.
The White House has so far rejected calls to withhold military aid or impose conditions on Israel, saying it would only embolden Israel’s enemies. But some in Mr. Biden’s inner circle believe that criticizing Mr. Netanyahu would allow him to distance himself from the unpopular leader and his scorched-earth policies while renewing his long-standing support for Israel itself. claims.
Mr. Biden’s personal grievances with Mr. Netanyahu have been building for months and came on Thursday in his sharpest rebuke to date when he said Israel’s military operations in Gaza were “going too far.”
The president also spoke in more detail about the suffering of the Palestinian people and the time and energy he spent trying to get Israel and Egypt to grant more aid to the 45-mile enclave. “So many innocent people are going hungry,” Biden said. “So many innocent people are falling into trouble and losing their lives. And it has to stop.”
A particular flash point is Israel’s plan to launch a military operation in Rafah, the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip, which borders Egypt and has expanded to more than four times its original size. “They’re already living in tents, they’re not getting enough food, they’re not getting enough water, and we’re telling them to go somewhere else,” said one outside White House adviser. . “Where? How are they supposed to get there?”
This article is based on interviews with 19 government officials and outside advisers, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
White House aides have said publicly that there are no changes to Biden’s strategy or message.
But many allies argue that a sharp shift in rhetoric will have little effect unless the United States begins imposing conditions on aid to Israel.
Ben Rhodes, former President Barack Obama’s vice presidential national security adviser, said: “It doesn’t really matter how much you turn the comment dial as long as you unconditionally support Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza.” said. “Basically, we have to make a decision not to give Bibi a blank aid check.” (“Bibi” is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s nickname.)
On October 7, 2019, Israel announced that it had committed a brutal attack on Hamas, when insurgents breached the border fence between Israel and Gaza and went on a rampage, killing 1,200 people, including civilians, and taking some 253 hostages. Punitive military action was launched in response to the attack. Since then, more than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and raids, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, and more than 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have died as the siege of the enclave has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe. I evacuated.
The White House has taken modest steps in recent days to demonstrate its growing dissatisfaction. Biden issued a national security memorandum aimed at ensuring that countries receiving U.S. weapons adhere to certain guidelines, including not interfering with humanitarian assistance.
Mr. Biden also issued an executive order earlier this month imposing sanctions on four West Bank settlers for violence against Palestinians, a move that Netanyahu announced in private talks with Mr. Blinken last week. Officials said they were dissatisfied. And on Thursday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Israeli operation in Rafah “is a disaster for those people and we do not support it,” which means the White House does not support Israeli military operations. This is what I most strongly oppose.
Some in the president’s inner circle have argued that Mr. Biden can support Israel while criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But people familiar with Biden’s thinking say he has an instinctive attachment to the Jewish state and tends to equate the prime minister with the state of Israel, which he criticizes. He says he is having trouble thinking. Especially the incumbent prime minister during wartime.
Two former Obama officials said that when Mr. Biden was vice president, he believed that Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu had too many differences among the public.
But Biden’s patience with how Israel conducts its military operations is wearing thin. And even though Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to want to score political points for himself by belittling Biden in his public appearances, Biden increases the political cost of embracing Israel. I’m letting you do it. As Biden faces a hard-fought re-election campaign, polls show young voters, people of color, Muslims and Arab Americans strongly disapprove of his handling of the war.
U.S. officials have been pressuring Israel for months to allow increased humanitarian aid, including food, water and medicine, to Gaza, but have faced repeated resistance from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. . Israeli protesters are also blocking aid trucks from entering through the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza.
A senior administration official who speaks regularly with the president said Biden’s unusually sharp comments on Thursday reflected what he has said in private for years.
“I don’t think anyone can look at what the Israelis have done in Gaza and not say it’s gone too far,” the official said. “This leads to frustration with the Israelis. Have they finished the work on what happens next in Gaza? No, they haven’t really addressed the difficult questions.”
The official added that Biden is very concerned about increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza and that it is “always on his mind” and is frustrated by the obstacles Israel is putting in place. Ta. “It’s all a daily struggle,” the official said.
Adding to the frustration of U.S. officials is their deep skepticism about Israel’s ability to achieve its stated goal of complete military victory.
In a private briefing last week, U.S. intelligence officials told lawmakers that Israel has degraded Hamas’ military capabilities, but more than 100 days into the operation, U.S. intelligence officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing, according to people familiar with the briefing that was first reported. He said he was no closer to annihilating Hamas. According to the New York Times.
U.S. leaders are skeptical of Netanyahu’s claim that he has wiped out two-thirds of Hamas’s fighting regiments, and the high number of civilian casualties suggests that a radicalized population will continue to grow in the coming decades. It warns that it is certain that they will live in land adjacent to Israel.
For now, U.S. officials are focused almost entirely on securing a deal to release many of the 130 Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a long-term cessation of fighting.
White House officials said the temporary ceasefire would allow desperately needed humanitarian aid to flood into Gaza. They also believe this will lead to some of the toughest challenges ahead, including who will rule Gaza, how to pave the way for a Palestinian state, and how to reform the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank. We hope to provide some space to begin addressing the problem.
White House officials say Netanyahu is focused on his own political survival to the exclusion of other goals and is keen to position himself as a counterbalance to Biden’s push for a two-state solution. strengthens the conclusion. At a news conference last month, Netanyahu publicly criticized Biden over his support for a Palestinian state, saying the Israeli prime minister needs “the ability to say no to his friends.”
Frank Loewenstein, a former senior State Department official who helped lead Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2014, said, “Prime Minister Netanyahu is using his own politics domestically. If I think it will help, I will do it.”
Aides say one of the biggest reasons Biden has been slow to criticize Netanyahu is his decades-long relationship with the prime minister. Mr. Biden reportedly often says to Prime Minister Netanyahu, “Bibi, I love you even if I can’t stand you.”
Netanyahu has at times helped reinforce Biden’s view of Israel as a heroic bulwark against global anti-Semitism. During the visit, when Mr. Biden was vice president, Netanyahu showed him a photo of egregious anti-Semitic depictions from Hamas and claimed that such incitement was the reason there could be no peace with the Palestinians, according to people familiar with the exchange. This was revealed by a person involved. Anonymity to account for private exchanges.
As Biden’s frustrations grew, he spoke less frequently with Israeli leaders. The last conversation, in mid-January, focused primarily on a potential hostage deal, according to a senior government official familiar with the conversations.
The official said Biden pressured Netanyahu to “take the proposal down on paper and test Hamas.” The president then met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, urging both sides to put pressure on Hamas to move closer to a deal.
Against this backdrop, the president and his aides were furious last week when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the latest hostage offer from Hamas — a promise that Blinken made on his fifth trip to Israel since the start of the war. This was just a few hours after I said yes.
“Giving in to Hamas’s ridiculous demands will not lead to the release of the hostages and will only lead to further massacres,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said.
Hours later, Mr. Blinken issued his sharpest criticism yet of the high civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip, restrictions on Israeli aid, and inflammatory rhetoric from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet members. It said it was causing “grave concern”.
“The daily toll of military operations on innocent civilians remains too high,” Blinken told reporters at a news conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. “On October 7th, Israelis were dehumanized in the most horrific way. Since then, hostages have been dehumanized every day. But that should not excuse the dehumanization of others. yeah.”
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