Biden speaks with Netanyahu after Israeli PM rejects US post-war vision
President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today for the first time in a month, a day after Netanyahu used a nationally televised press conference to attack the United States’ vision for a post-Gaza war peace plan.
“Whoever is talking about the ‘day after Netanyahu’ is essentially talking about the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said in a confrontational televised news conference Thursday that rejected the U.S. vision for the post-war that would include an Israeli Saudi normalization deal for some sort of two state solution that would give Palestinians more autonomy.
In any future arrangement, Netanyahu said, Israel must maintain security control of all territory including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
This “contradicts the idea of sovereignty” for the Palestinians, Netanyahu said. “I tell this truth to our American friends.”
Biden today seemed to brush off the disagreement.
“I think we’ll be able to work something out,” Biden told reporters this afternoon on the sidelines of remarks to a conference of mayors.
“There are a number of types of two state solutions,” Biden said, noting there are countries with UN seats that do not have their own militaries. “And so, I think there are ways in which this could work.”
In the 30 to 40 minute call, “the President reiterated his strong conviction in the viability of a two state solution, understanding, of course, that we're not going to get there tomorrow, that there is an active conflict going on,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told journalists at the White House briefing today.
“But as we're talking about post-conflict Gaza,… you can't do that without also talking about the aspirations of the Palestinian people,” Kirby said. “And what that needs to look like for them. So we're going to continue to have those conversations.”
Netanyahu opens a public front against Biden
Netanyahu picked a fight with Biden because he thinks it helps himself politically at home, said Natan Sachs, Director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy.
“Netanyahu has now opened a public front with Joe Biden,” Sachs told me by phone today. “And Joe Biden, unlike Barack Obama, has gained enormous credit from the Israeli public. Enormous, historic. On the level of Truman and Kissinger….And he can use it. … I don’t think he needs to be so cautious” about potentially appearing to interfere in Israeli domestic matters.
Biden could make the case that the United States is heavily involved and has a high interest in the successful resolution of the Israel-Hamas conflict, “and also say it to the Israeli public,” Sachs said. “And Joe Biden is in a perfect positon to say it. …Biden has enormous good will in Israel. He could use it. And I don’t think he needs to be timid. The one who is on his heels here is Netanyahu. He is the one who’s in dire straits, and he’s the one now trying to pick a fight that he thinks will help him.”
Blinken: Is Israeli society prepared to engage on these questions?
“There is a profound opportunity for regionalization in the Middle East, in the greater Middle East, that we have not had before,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a conversation with the New York Times’ Tom Friedman in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 17. “The challenge is realizing it.”
“Does Israel have the prime minister for that opportunity?,” Friedman asked.
“Look, these are decisions for Israelis to make,” Blinken responded. “This is a profound decision for the country as a whole to make: What direction does it want to take? …Can it seize the opportunity that we believe is there? And they’ll have to make those decisions.”
“It’s not that any of this happens overnight,” Blinken later said. “It’s not like it’s flipping a light switch. But seeing if we can…start to move to this different vision, to this different equation, to this different integration, I think that has to begin as quickly as possible.”
While in past American efforts to advance Israeli Palestinian peace, often the US side believed it was the Palestinian side that could not ultimately say yes, now it may be the Israelis, Blinken suggested.
“The profound difference now I think is in the mindset of leaders throughout the Arab world and in Muslim countries, and in a way it’s a reversal, it’s a flip,” Blinken said. “When in previous times we came close to resolving the Palestinian question, getting a Palestinian state, I think the view then…was that Arab leaders, Palestinian leaders, had not done enough to prepare their own people for this profound change. I think a challenge now, a question now: Is Israeli society prepared to engage on these questions? Is it prepared to have that mindset?”
“That’s challenging,” Blinken said. “And it’s, of course, doubly challenging when you’re focused intensely on Gaza.”
Sachs: Hard to overstate how terrified Israelis are
Brookings’ Sachs said Netanyahu is well aware of the Israeli public’s terror of giving the Palestinians more concessions especially over security matters, in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 Israelis. He is trying to use their terror to his political advantage, without offering any viable solution for who should provide security and governance in post-war Gaza.
“On the security side of thing, it is not just Netanyahu. Israelis across the board are loath to give the Palestinians of any of the parties…a stronger security foothold that could threaten Israelis,” Sachs said. “It’s hard to overstate how terrified they are.
“But that doesn’t have to translate to hawkishness on settlements, on the Palestinian Authority writ large, which Netanyahu is of course doing…but that is something you can influence, and that where I think the US should be playing,” Sachs said.
Netanyahu “understands perfectly well that the Israeli public is terrified of more concessions to Palestinians, which they see as threatening their security, something that they’re simply not going to contemplate,” Sachs said. “Netanyahu politically is grasping for anything that will save him politically. …He understands that…he has placed himself categorically against the Palestinian Authority playing a role,… because he is preparing a campaign against [former Israeli Defense Minister and opposition politician] Benny Gantz.”
“Benny Gantz would not establish a Palestinian state any time soon, just to be clear,” Sachs said. “But he would work with the Palestinian Authority, the Egyptians, everyone else. And, there you go. There is Netanyahu explaining to the Israeli electorate, ‘I am going to defend you, this guy is soft.’”
Sachs sketches out a possibly more politically viable path in a piece in Foreign Affairs today.
“Solutions-oriented conflict management would take very seriously Israelis’ fears about security, exacerbated on October 7, while taking a hard stance toward Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank that fuels Palestinian fears,” he wrote. “The goal of this approach would be to gradually reunite Gaza and the West Bank under a constructive [Palestinian Authority] that had real civilian authority,… without additional ability to threaten Israel.”
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