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| Message From Washington is Loud & Clear Benjamin Netanyahu, It’s Time To Go! |
Nothing is for free in America, that's a description that applies to a lot of activity in and around Washington these days, but especially applies to one of the most important relationships President Joe Biden is working on. His long acquaintance with Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. These two leaders have been joined anew in recent days of course, by the rising tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and specifically the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip. President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu, have talked numerous times during the course of this crisis. And publicly Mr. Biden has largely defended Israel's right to respond with military force to Hamas rocket attacks saying, "It was entitled to act in self-defense." The United States fully supports Israel's right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks from Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups that have taken the lives of innocent civilians in Israel. Privately he reportedly has been much tougher with Mr. Netanyahu, saying, "He expected him to deescalate the situation and deal with Palestinian grievances." His nudging may have led to the ceasefire that's finally taken hold but these two are far from done with each other. Now the Biden administration inevitably will be deeply involved in trying to broker a broader agreement to simultaneously deal with Israel's security concerns, as well as Palestinian simmering anger at the way they're treated by Israel, not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and increasingly inside Israel itself.
The long history of this relationship shows President Biden is
prepared to push Prime Minister Netanyahu to go further than he wants to
accommodate Palestinian demands. But also that he's more likely to do his hard
pressing privately rather than publicly. I don't talk about what I tell people
in private. I don't talk about what we negotiate in private. These two men have
known each other since the early 1980s, when Mr. Netanyahu was the second in
charge at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and then later Israel's ambassador
to the united nations. Mr. Biden meanwhile was a US Senator developing a
particular interest in foreign affairs. They came into closer contact in The 1990s when Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister and Senator Biden was on his way
to becoming the top Democrat and eventually chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. They were in these positions of power in the early 2000s
when the George W. Bush administration was both marshaling an international
response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and also trying to get peace talks going
between Israel and the Palestinians.
Their relationship became more important
during the Obama administration when Mr. Biden was vice-president and Mr.
Netanyahu again became prime minister. Their relationship also became tenser
in those days. The Obama administration put a high priority on finding a new
Israeli Palestinian peace accord. Vice-president Biden was visiting Israel in
March 2010, trying to assure Israel of American support for its security in any
such peace deal when the Netanyahu administration announced the construction of
hundreds of new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem, the part of the city
where Palestinians envisioned putting the capital of a Palestinian state
someday. Israeli housing there is one of the most sensitive issues for
Palestinians and one that US officials have long thought undermines the chances
for diplomacy. Mr. Biden was blindsided and he wasn't happy. There were tensions
again on another front in 2015, when Prime Minister Netanyahu visited Washington,
and at the invitation of Republican leaders delivered a speech to a joint
session of Congress devoted to attacking the Iran Nuclear Deal the Obama
administration was then negotiating. The greatest danger facing our world is the
marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get
nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. Obama
administration officials were furious and vice-president Biden who normally
would have attended such a speech was notably absent.
Through these tensions,
President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu appear to have maintained a good
relationship, one in which they are generally supportive of each other publicly,
but have blunt and sometimes acrimonious conversations in private. Mr. Biden in
particular seems to have decided to avoid the public sparring that hurt
president Obama's relationship with Israel. These two men are now being tested
anew, as it is it may be that their relationship is shored up by one
characteristic that they share. Both Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu are very
good at the art of political survival but it seems like, for Netanyahu, the party
is almost over.