Domestic Political Pressures Widen Divide Between
Biden and Netanyahu
The war in Gaza has sorely strained relations between
Israel and the United States, and the leaders of both countries have allies at
home who would pull them farther apart.
Steven Erlanger Aaron
Boxerman
By Steven Erlanger and
Aaron Boxerman
Steven
Erlanger, a former bureau chief in Jerusalem, reported from Berlin, and Aaron
Boxerman from Jerusalem.
March 26,
2024
Relations
between President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appear
to have sunk to a new low, with both men pressed hard by domestic politics and
looming elections.
Mr. Biden
is facing outrage from global allies and his own supporters about the toll of
civilian deaths in the war against Hamas and Israel’s restrictions on allowing
food and medicine into Gaza amid critical shortages. On Monday, Mr. Biden
allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution demanding an immediate
cease-fire in Gaza, as the U.S. ambassador abstained rather than vetoing the
measure, as the United States had done in the past.
In
response, Mr. Netanyahu, who is trying to keep his own far-right coalition
government in power, called off a planned high-level delegation to Washington
for meetings with U.S. officials to discuss alternatives to a planned Israeli
offensive into Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than a million people
have sought refuge.
Mr.
Netanyahu, however, allowed his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to remain in
Washington for talks with top Biden administration officials.
Those are
“the talks that matter,” said Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.
He said Mr. Netanyahu’s cancellation of the other meetings, a public poke in
the eye of the American president who requested them, “is strictly
performative.”
Mr.
Netanyahu is facing sharp criticism from his far-right coalition partners,
Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, over any indication that he is hesitating
in the war against Hamas or in the expansion of Israeli settlements in the
occupied West Bank. His wartime government is also deeply divided over proposed
legislation that could end up drafting more ultra-Orthodox Israelis, known as
Haredim, into the military — a vote that was suddenly postponed on Tuesday
morning.
For now, at
least, Mr. Netanyahu’s political survival depends on keeping Mr. Ben-Gvir and
Mr. Smotrich in his coalition. If they leave the government, it would force
early Israeli elections that Mr. Netanyahu would most likely lose to his
centrist rival, Benny Gantz.
New
elections are precisely what Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and
the majority leader, called for in a recent speech, in which he said Mr.
Netanyahu was an impediment to peace. Mr. Biden called it “a good speech”
without endorsing the call for elections.
Nadav
Shtrauchler, a political strategist who previously worked with Mr. Netanyahu,
said the prime minister was seeking to embody a central narrative: “We must
stand strong, even against the United States, and I am the man with the
backbone to do that.”
Mr.
Netanyahu and his far-right partners have made increasingly harsh remarks
criticizing the Biden administration. In a recent interview, Mr. Ben-Gvir, the
national security minister, accused Mr. Biden of tacitly supporting Israel’s
enemies like Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, and Rashida Tlaib, a
Democratic congresswoman of Palestinian descent who represents a Michigan
district.
“Presently,
Biden prefers the line of Rashida Tlaib and Sinwar to the line of Benjamin
Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir,” Mr. Ben-Gvir said in an interview.
“I would
have expected the president of the United States not to take their line, but
rather to take ours,” he added.
By seeking
to pressure Israel, President Biden was “enormously mistaken,” Mr. Ben-Gvir
said, adding that Mr. Biden “constantly sought to impose restrictions on Israel
and talks about the rights of the other side, who include, I remind you, many
terrorists who want to destroy us.”
Mr. Biden’s
action on the Security Council resolution appears to be more political than
substantive, and his own officials insist that American policy has not changed.
The U.S.
government remains committed to supporting Israel, and there has been no hint
that it might reduce the supply of American weapons going to Israel. The U.N.
abstention does not amount to an American veto of Israel’s military campaign
against Hamas in Rafah, though it does underscore American and allied desire
that Israel first come up with a detailed plan to spare the civilians hunkering
down there.
But Mr.
Biden is also conscious of the souring attitudes toward Israel in his own
Democratic Party, undercutting his support in battleground states as he runs
for re-election.
The
administration’s recent actions add up to both serious and substantive
signaling of the president’s displeasure with the Israeli prime minister, said
Natan Sachs, director of the Brookings Institution Center for Middle East
Policy.
The United
States imposed sanctions on violent Israeli settlers, multiple administration
officials have offered sharp public criticism of Israel’s plans to press its
offensive into Rafah
and Mr.
Gantz, against Mr. Netanyahu’s wishes, visited Washington, where he was granted
meetings with high-level officials, including Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s
national security adviser, and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“There are
deep disagreements between Biden and Netanyahu and there is a clear change of
policy” in Washington, Mr. Sachs argued. “There are always politics at play,
but these differences are not purely politically driven.”
The United
States continues to work with Israel and Arab allies in an attempt to broker a
temporary cease-fire in Gaza in return for the release by Hamas of Israeli
hostages. Washington hopes to turn a temporary truce into a longer-term one
that could allow for serious talks on how Gaza can be governed and rebuilt
while protecting Israeli security. But that is a battle yet to be fought,
especially as talks on a temporary cease-fire drag on.
Unlike
previous U.S.-Israeli spats, this one is occurring during a war in which what
eventually happens in Gaza — whether Hamas is finally defeated or emerges with
operational military units — is a serious issue of Israeli security, said Aaron
David Miller, a former American diplomat now with the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.
“How does
Biden change the picture in Gaza when the Israeli prime minister and much of
the Israeli public, including Gantz, are committed to the war aims of defeating
Hamas in Gaza and restoring Israeli security?” Mr. Miller asked. “You need the
acquiescence and support of the prime minister.”
The risk
for Mr. Biden, Mr. Miller said, is that his confrontations with Mr. Netanyahu
may make it more difficult to get Israel’s cooperation on the president’s goals
— “a de-escalation of the war, a massive increase in humanitarian assistance
and a less bloody operation in Rafah,” let alone a workable postwar plan for
governing Gaza.
In a deeper
way, the present disagreements build on 20 years of increasingly difficult
relations over Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and Mr.
Netanyahu’s efforts to undermine the possibility of a two-state solution.
“There is a
building sense that the Israel-U.S. relationship is coming apart,” Mr. Miller
said. “Do they really share our values and interests when their policy is
annexation in all but name and they defy advice from one of the most pro-Israel
presidents in history?”
Mr.
Netanyahu has a history of using his arguments with American presidents —
including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — to bolster his domestic political
standing, seeking to show that he is Israel’s best defense against outside
pressure for concessions on relations with the Palestinians or even on a
now-faded deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Right now,
Mr. Netanyahu is trying to portray himself as standing up to Washington and the
world in the name of Israeli security.
“He is
setting up a situation where he can blame the U.S. for holding him back in
Rafah from finishing the job with Hamas and keeping Israel from obtaining its
goals,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel now at
Princeton University. “And if he does go in, he can argue that he’s the only
Israeli leader who can withstand American pressure.”
Alon
Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, said that Mr. Netanyahu would try to blame
Mr. Biden for failing to triumph over Hamas.
“Since
there won’t be a total elimination or eradication of Hamas, he needs someone to
blame,” he said. “And there’s only one person he can blame for it — Biden.”
At the same
time, Mr. Kurtzer said, Mr. Biden is far more popular in Israel than Mr. Obama
was and a serious break with Washington would deeply undermine Israel’s
security, its military capacity and its future. So Mr. Netanyahu has to be
careful not to go too far.
Steven
Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in
Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France,
Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union. More about Steven Erlanger
Aaron
Boxerman is a Times reporting fellow with a focus on international news. More about Aaron Boxerman
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário