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US President Joe Biden, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, at a meeting on October 18, 2023 in Tel Aviv to discuss the war between Israel and Hamas (symbolic image).
© Miriam Alster/Imago
The war in Israel and the dramatic humanitarian situation in Gaza amid the Israeli offensive are causing discontent in the USA.
The gap between Biden and Netanyahu is growing.
Washington DC - Senior officials in Joe Biden's administration believed they had made clear to their Israeli counterparts in nonstop talks over the weekend the possibility that the United States would move closer to a UN Security Council resolution on Monday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip contained than would be vetoed.
But the White House was blindsided by what happened after the abstention vote: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly canceled the trip to Washington of a high-level delegation that President Biden had specifically asked in a phone call last week to address the concerns of the White House US to discuss Israel's plans for a major military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the cancellation “surprising and unfortunate,” expressing the government’s shock.
The remarkable turn of events has turned a deepening rift between Biden and Netanyahu into a public abyss.
Administration officials hastened to emphasize that there had been no change in U.S. policy, that Israeli plans for a Rafah operation were not imminent anyway, that negotiations over the release of the hostages were continuing and that they were looking forward to future talks with Netanyahu and his government are happy.
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War in Israel: Netanyahu government makes accusations against USA
Despite the extensive consultations over the weekend and without any effort from the Israeli leader to reach Biden directly, Netanyahu, in a statement released by his office after the vote, accused the United States of “abandoning its policy at the UN today.
Regrettably, the United States did not veto the new resolution calling for a ceasefire that is not conditional on the release of the hostages." This, the statement said, was "a clear departure from the U.S. position." .
The meeting was canceled - a delegation led by Ron Dermer, Netanyahu's senior strategic adviser, did not travel to Washington as planned.
The page-long resolution itself arose from an attempt to bridge differences that had left the Security Council - the main body responsible for maintaining international peace and security - appearing weak and ineffective in several attempts to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
The United States had already vetoed three previous ceasefire resolutions;
Their proposal on Friday to condition an immediate ceasefire on the release of hostages was blocked by Russia and China.
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Monday's resolution was introduced by the body's 10 non-permanent members, who represent the rest of the world beyond the five countries - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - that have veto power.
UN resolution on the war in Gaza: disagreement over final version
Israel objected to much of the text, calling for the word "permanent" to be deleted before the ceasefire formulation and insisting that the demand for the release of Israelis held hostage by Hamas be conditional on a cessation of fighting .
The United States shared these concerns: it persuaded supporters to delete the word “permanent” and at least include calls for a ceasefire and a separate hostage release in the same paragraph.
The final version called for an “immediate ceasefire” that would last at least until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in two weeks and lead to a “permanent and sustainable” end to the fighting.
The same long sentence also called for the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and ensuring humanitarian access.”
Neither Israel nor Hamas were mentioned by name.
“We didn’t agree with everything,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the council.
The United States still wanted a clear condemnation of Hamas and a link between the release of the hostages and a ceasefire, as it continues to seek in the ongoing negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
Ultimately, however, Washington felt that this was sufficient.
Division between USA and Israel is growing: Is there a break between Biden and Netanyahu?
Hours after the vote, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby sought to downplay the sense of bilateral tensions, telling reporters at the White House that the United States continued to "back up" Israel and called for the release of all hostages held by Hamas would push.
Nevertheless, he described Netanyahu's decision to cancel the delegation's trip as disappointing.
“We're a little perplexed by this,” Kirby said, repeating the government's assertion that the abstention did not represent a change in policy.
"It seems like the Prime Minister's Office wants to create an impression of daylight here, even though it doesn't need to."
For Biden, who has deep ties to Israel and has been reluctant to break with Netanyahu, the break was the culmination of months of frustration.
Since the war began with the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis and captured at least 250 hostages, Biden and his senior advisers have backed Israel at almost every opportunity.
That support continued even as Netanyahu publicly opposed the United States on virtually every major issue, including the administration's desire for a return of the Palestinian Authority to the Gaza Strip, a massive increase in humanitarian aid to the enclave and a pathway to a Palestinian state.
Faced with increasing international isolation over the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israeli air and ground strikes in the Gaza Strip and hundreds of thousands on the brink of starvation, the government has repeatedly supported Israel's "right to self-defense" and continued to send weapons to Israel delivered.
War in Israel: “Biden did everything for months to avoid a major public dispute”
Frank Lowenstein, a former State Department official who helped with Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2014, said three main factors likely led to Monday's events: the deep disagreements between Washington and Israel over a large-scale invasion of Rafah, where more than a million Gazans have sought refuge from Israeli attacks further north;
the catastrophic humanitarian situation;
and Israel's announcements of new settlements while Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the country on Friday.
“Biden did everything he could for months to avoid a major public fight,” Lowenstein said.
“This reflects a very serious shift in the White House's position on how to deal with the Israelis throughout the remainder of the war.
Either the Israelis will listen up now, or we will probably continue down this path.”
Over the weekend, Israel said it would no longer allow UNRWA, the main UN aid agency operating in the Gaza Strip, to bring humanitarian supplies to the north.
Despite private urging from the US, Israel has refused to take action to speed up the passage of aid supplies into and through the Gaza Strip, prompting Biden to order the US military to airdrop pallets of food and set up a makeshift pier on the coast of the Gaza Strip to begin transporting humanitarian supplies.
The government is particularly angry about the aggressive actions of the Israeli military and settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as the announcement of new settlements that it describes as illegal.
White House officials have advised Israel that the new construction undermines the country's long-term security by further angering and radicalizing the Palestinian population and preventing the possibility of a two-state solution.
On Friday, as Blinken traveled to Tel Aviv for talks with Netanyahu and senior advisers, Israel announced the largest land seizure in the West Bank since 1993.
The move was seen as a huge show of disrespect.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich - whom the United States views as a particularly problematic member of Netanyahu's government, along with National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir - boasted about the settlements.
Mara Rudman, who served as Middle East envoy during the Obama administration, said that while the underlying relationship could withstand the recent dispute, "the personal dynamic between Biden and Netanyahu is likely to be particularly tense" in one Way that makes it clear why the Israeli leader is facing growing calls for a change in leadership.
“Geopolitical relationships, like personal relationships, go through rough times, even in the most solid marriages,” she said.
“The US and Israel have now reached this point.
War in Israel: Friction between US President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
Netanyahu has also had a strained relationship with President Barack Obama, and the United States' decision to abstain from a U.N. Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlements in late 2016 further inflamed tensions between them.
The year before, Netanyahu traveled to Washington to give a joint speech to Congress denouncing Obama's proposed nuclear deal with Iran - bypassing traditional protocol and to the annoyance of the White House.
The relationship with Biden, which has spanned several decades, was expected to be different.
Biden, who has often said he tells Netanyahu, "I love you, Bibi, even though I don't like you," has spoken at length about his history with Israel, dating back to his time as a senator.
Yet he has been under enormous political and international pressure in recent months to publicly break with the Israeli leader and his far-right government.
The president has faced protesters at his political events and a sustained campaign by voters in key states to withhold their support for him in this year's presidential race.
More than 100,000 voters in Michigan marked “Uncommitted” on their ballots during that state’s primary, and many Arab American voters said Biden lost their vote in November.
While some activists welcomed Monday's U.N. Security Council vote, others called for Biden to go further and limit the transfer of U.S. weapons to Israel.
“We are glad that the US is no longer actively blocking calls for a ceasefire, but it is long past time for the Biden administration to use all of its leverage - including stopping arms transfers - to push for an immediate and permanent ceasefire “To urge hostage exchange and massive aid to Gaza,” said Eva Borgwardt, spokeswoman for the American Jewish group IfNotNow, which opposes Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
The effort extends beyond activists to include leading lawmakers in the president's own party.
Some, including Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, have used their platform to publicly propose replacing Netanyahu.
John Hudson contributed to this report.
To the authors
Yasmeen Abutaleb
is a White House reporter at The Washington Post.
She joined The Post in 2019 as a national health policy reporter.
Yasmeen Abutaleb is co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration Response to the Pandemic that Changed History.
Karen DeYoung
is an associate editor and senior national security correspondent at The Post.
In more than three decades at the newspaper, she served as bureau chief in Latin America and London and as a White House, U.S. foreign policy and intelligence correspondent.
Toluse “Tolu” Olorunnipa
is the White House bureau chief at The Washington Post and co-author of “His Name is George Floyd,” which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.
He has worked for the Post since 2019 and has covered the last three presidents.
He previously worked at Bloomberg News and the Miami Herald, reporting from Washington and Florida.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on March 26, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.