Senior American officials held deliberations about whether to continue supplying weapons to Israel, and Biden hints at not using his veto in a future vote in the Security Council, and his statements indicate the existence of a political gap between his administration and Netanyahu’s government.

The statements of US President Joe Biden yesterday, in which he addressed the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the war on Gaza, the indiscriminate bombing, and the possibilities of a shift in international public opinion, raised concern in Israel about the possibilities of a shift in the American position in particular, according to what was expressed by Israeli analysts today, Wednesday.

The political analyst in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Nahum Barnea, reported that senior officials in the Biden administration deliberated in-depth, over the end of last week, on whether to continue supplying Israel with the ammunition and military equipment it requires for the war on Gaza. He added that opinions in these deliberations were divided, but “disgust towards Netanyahu and his government” emerged.

According to Barnea, Biden expressed in his statements yesterday the “frustration in the White House,” and that he echoed what his advisors said in internal conversations about Israel’s loss of international support. He considered that this means that "it is not certain that in the next vote in the Security Council, America will use its veto."

He added that Biden's demand that Netanyahu change his government comes in the wake of his government's refusal to begin bringing Palestinian workers from the West Bank into Israel, which comes in line with the refusal of the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, to transfer the clearance funds to the Palestinian Authority, and in parallel granting Smotrich and the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, “a free hand” for settlers to attack Palestinians and their property.

Barnea pointed out that because these matters come during the American election year, and the presence of opposition within groups in the Democratic Party to the war on Gaza, and Biden’s support for Israel and the attacks in the West Bank, internal Israeli affairs have become “an internal American matter.”

Barnea and other Israeli analysts believed that Netanyahu's rejection of Biden's request to discuss the situation in Gaza after the war, a day before the start of visits by high-level American officials to Israel, is a "declaration of war" against the Biden administration. They considered that the reason for this was Netanyahu's attempt to once again gain the support of the right-wing public, many of whom abandoned Netanyahu due to the October 7 attack and the government's failures after this attack.

For his part, the Israeli diplomat and former consul in New York, Alon Pinkas, pointed out in the newspaper "Haaretz" that Biden's statement that "the international community may turn against Israel" means that this causes external political harm to the United States and internal political harm to Biden himself.

In order to justify Biden's unlimited support for Israel, Pinkas considered that "Biden loves Israel, but he does not love Netanyahu," and that "he sees Israel as an ally, but he does not see Netanyahu as an ally." He added, "Netanyahu realizes this and will turn Biden's statements into evidence that the American president is trying to overthrow him, while he (Netanyahu) is leading Israel during the war."

Pinkas pointed out that what is more important than what Biden said is what he did not say. “There are two important things that Biden and his advisors have become aware of for several weeks. The first is that Netanyahu is actively looking for a confrontation with the administration over the form and plan for managing the war and the political - authoritarian - security reality in Gaza, which is called ‘the next day’; and the second is that the United States “You estimate that Netanyahu hopes and may actively encourage an escalation by the Houthis or Hezbollah in order to lure the United States into war.”

Pinkas added that in both cases there is an internal political motive and a struggle for survival for Netanyahu. 

“In the first case, Netanyahu hopes to blame the United States for preventing him from achieving a historic victory that changes reality. 

In the second case, he hopes to design a new awareness and narrative: a miserable failure on October 7 turned into a strategic achievement if the United States attacks Iran. 

It does not matter if this happens.” Or it does not happen. What is important now, in Netanyahu’s view, is to distance himself from October 7. (The new narrative is that) the Israeli army and the Shin Bet misled him and failed him, but he remedied the situation, and as a historical and epic leader of a second war of independence, he was about to bring about massive geopolitical change, and Biden curbed it.” .

Pinkas considered that, “From a political standpoint, there is great importance to Biden’s statements. It is an indication that a real gap has opened between the United States and Israel with regard to trends and policy, and Washington has run out of patience.”

In turn, the journalist on the Walla website, Nir Kipnis, pointed out one thing that links the wars that Israel has fought for forty years, which is that it “receives blows, responds with a war in order to restore its deterrent power, and is involved in statements that it cannot achieve.”

After Hezbollah killed two Israeli soldiers and captured their bodies, in 2006, Israel launched a war on Lebanon, and declared then, as it declares now, that “we will not return without the kidnapped ones.” However, the war lasted weeks, and years later, the two sides reached a prisoner exchange deal.

Kipnis added, "Israel tells itself what we all want to hear. The leadership justifies the bleeding slowness (with the war and the killing of soldiers) by saying that we must act according to Western standards, in order to obtain an extension to carry out the mission, and then it becomes clear that we need additional time. It is also denounced as 'criminals.' "War" will not be delayed until it finally becomes clear that we received the first blow, that we threatened but did not implement it, and that we received condemnation from all international parties, and in the end we are forced to announce a questionable "victory", which in football language is nothing more than a draw that is all a loss.

Source: Arab48