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The Biden Plan to Ditch Israel’s Netanyahu Noga Tarnopolsky 10–13
minutes The “come to Jesus moment” is already here, according to
Israeli and U.S. sources.  ISRAEL-US-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT


Weeks before “uncommitted” voters sent a message to Joe Biden
that he needs to bring an end to Israel’s war in Gaza or risk losing
reelection, the president had evidently decided — to borrow another
American neologism — to consciously uncouple from Benjamin Netanyahu,
Israel’s recalcitrant prime minister.

In the past month, he has, through a series of relatively quiet but
closely linked and deliberate moves, sought to marginalize Bibi,
as Netanyahu is ubiquitously known, internationally and at home. The
change spilled out publicly on Thursday night following the State of
the Union address, when Biden announced he ordered the U.S. military
to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza via a sea pier. After the speech,
Biden was stopped by Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who told him to
“keep pushing” Israel’s leader. Smiling, Biden said, “I told him,
‘Bibi,’— don’t repeat this— ‘you & I are going to have a come
to Jesus moment.” Hidden behind Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a
presidential aide whispered, “Sir, you’re on a hot mic,” to which a
buoyant Biden replied, “I’m on a hot mic here. Good. That’s good.”

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and an
authority on the relationship between the two countries, says the White
House has been unhappy with Netanyahu for a long time, “but now in my
view they’re even angrier and they are sharpening the tone. Biden is not
coming at him personally, but off-the-record and in closed meetings, the
sentiment is clear. They disagree on many things: on Gaza the day after
the war; on the Palestinian Authority; on a return to Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations; all very significant issues.”

One Israeli expert frequently consulted by American officials says,
“I have been asked by a serious administration figure what it is that
will force the Netanyahu coalition to collapse. They were interested in
the mechanics, what can we demand which will collapse his coalition.”

In the event the new American position over Netanyahu remained unclear,
Vice President Kamala Harris left no doubts in a Friday interview with
CBS News, which asked “are the Israelis at risk of losing U.S. aid
if this continues?” Harris replied: “I think it’s important for
us to distinguish or at least not conflate the Israeli government with
the Israeli people.”

In other words: Israelis, we’re with you. Netanyahu, be gone.

Biden’s command to build a sea pier is an end-run around Netanyahu’s
dithering to allow aid to be transported overland from Israel, as the
U.S. has demanded for months. The 300,000 people remaining in northern
Gaza are at greatest danger of starvation, and almost 2 million
are huddling in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where Netanyahu is
rattling sabres about an offensive against Hamas. His fight against
more aid has helped him with his hard-right base, which opposes any
support for the Gazan population, and has stymied negotiations for the
release of Israel’s 134 remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange
for a ceasefire.

The pier was the second initiative through which Biden undermined
Netanyahu over that past week. On March 1, immediately following a
stampede around trucks delivering food and water to Gaza City, in which
the crush and shots fired by Israeli soldiers who say they were protecting
the vehicles left more than 100 dead, Biden announced the U.S. would
immediately initiate air drops of food to besieged residents, alongside
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. (A senior U.S. official told the New
York Times this was a tipping point for the Biden administration.) Israel
appeared to know nothing of the airdrops, but the army — which also
finds itself at loggerheads with Netanyahu — took the news in stride,
saying in a statement that the operation had been “coordinated.”

Biden addressed Congress six months to the day after Hamas’s
attack killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 250 others. Over the same
period, more than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza (including,
according to Palestinian and Israeli authorities, thousands of Hamas
fighters). Netanyahu refuses to define any endpoint to the combat other
than his constantly repeated slogan: “total victory.”

As the war escalated in spite of Biden’s repeated warnings to Israel
not to go overboard and have a clear exit strategy, his frustration
with Netanyahu’s leadership began to swell. Amos Harel, the military
analyst for Ha’aretz, says “apart from his promised ‘total
victory,’ which no one can define, there’s no plan, so the army’s
considerable achievements in Gaza are not being translated into anything
strategic. These gains are being lost. The army may not share all of
Biden’s positions, but each understands that they need a strategy to
bring this war to an end.”

“This is something of a pivotal moment,” says Daniel Seideman, an
Israeli attorney and expert on the geopolitics of the country. “The
danger of regional war is palpable. They are thinking in terms of
the Cuban Missile Crisis, of 1938. Things are going on that could
easily trigger a broader conflict and preventing that is clearly the
administration’s interest — and Netanyahu is not being cooperative.”

Netanyahu is highly vulnerable at home. For months, he’s faced
blistering anger from the family members of the remaining hostages,
whose fate he seems ambivalent about, at best. A recent poll shows that
a majority of Israelis, 53 percent, believe Netanyahu is extending the
war so as to “survive politically,” not defeat Hamas. It’s just
the latest negative finding about the political standing of Israel’s
longest-serving leader, whose popularity among Israelis flounders at about
20 percent. The October 7 debacle Netanyahu presided over, for which he
refuses to accept any responsibility, came on top of his corruption trial
and his related push to neuter Israel’s judiciary, which threatened
over the past year to tear the country apart. Until and if Israelis find
a way to unseat Netanyahu, a relentless politician who returned to power
in December 2022, there’s not much Biden can do to force him out, but
that hasn’t stopped him from trying to undermine Netanyahu politically.

The first move against Netanyahu came on February 1, when Biden signed an
extraordinary executive order imposing sanctions “on persons undermining
peace, security and stability in the West Bank,” occupied by Israel
since 1967, which the U.S., Europe, and, crucially, Palestinians,
see as the heart of their future state. The sanctions targeted only
four Israeli settlers, but had a major ripple effect in Israel. In
addition to rattling Netanyahu’s far-right, settler base that has
grown accustomed to impunity, the order implicitly condemned Netanyahu:
He has constrained police and judicial efforts to investigate and pursue
settlers perpetrating acts of violence against Palestinians.

An overlooked line in the order underscores the gravity of Biden’s
threat to Netanyahu and his hard-line coalition. The U.S., it reads,
may sanction anyone “responsible for or complicit in” actions
that endanger Palestinian residents, “including directing, enacting,
implementing, enforcing, or failing to enforce policies.” The final
clause indicates the American conviction that Israel’s authorities
are flouting their own laws. Not only violent settlers are liable:
Netanyahu and his ministers are clearly in their sights.

The full effect of Biden’s public moves against Netanyahu’s government
took several weeks to sink in. Three days after the Americans, Canada
announced it would follow suit with sanctions. Britain and France rapidly
fell into line, announcing their own sanctions, which Paris imposed on 28
unnamed settlers. Even Germany, Israel’s closest ally after the U.S.,
adhered to the measure.

Soon, Netanyahu’s most extremist ministers, national security advisor
Itamar Ben Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, realized they may
be among these unnamed targets. Then the Biden administration leaked
that it was, in fact, considering direct measures against these two,
who Ehud Barak, a former prime minister, terms “Israeli Proud Boys.”

The White House “won’t speak directly against Netanyahu’s
partners,” Rabinovitch says, “but the threat against Ben Gvir and
Smotrich is coming closer, and if things aren’t resolved I assume they
will be made explicit.”

Weeks later, the White House let it be known it was considering
recognition of a Palestinian state in Gaza and in the West Bank,
which is anathema for Netanyahu: He reacted to the White House pivot by
telling Israelis “only I can block a Palestinian state.” The prime
minister justifies his longtime authorization of transfers of billions
of dollars to Gaza — money ostensibly destined for humanitarian
purposes, but which only served to shore up Hamas — as a manner of
weakening the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized
Palestinian government. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment
of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring
money to Hamas,” Netanyahu allegedly told members of his Likud party
in 2019. “This is part of our strategy”

By early March, the gruff Netanyahu appeared to have been reduced to
something of afterthought for the the Biden administration: Benny Gantz,
Netanyahu’s political rival who joined his war cabinet last October,
went to the White House against the prime minister’s wishes and
met with Harris, Blinken, and Jake Sullivan, the White House national
security advisor.

An American source familiar with the administration’s thinking says
the White House realizes that “Netanyahu is in a corner of his own
making. He has no room to maneuver. He is screwing us. The politics of
this have to completely change, and I think time is running out.”

Seideman says the administration is getting ready “to put Netanyahu
to the test in ways that have not happened before. ‘Are you with us
or are you against us? We’re not going to dictate the result. But if
you’re against us, there will be consequences.’”

“I don’t for a moment think that Biden will abandon Israel,”
Seideman says, “but the Americans are arriving at the conclusion that
supporting Netanyahu means being harmful to Israel. There is a distinction
between Israel’s interests and Netanyahu’s interests.” The Biden
Plan to Ditch Netanyahu