The Washington Post revealed that in the days following the October 7 attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked President Biden: If he can pressure the Egyptian president to open his country’s borders and absorb a large portion of the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza?

According to the newspaper, “Biden told Netanyahu that the idea was not accepted by the Egyptian government, which made clear that it was not interested in receiving Palestinians and playing a role in their mass displacement. But many Israeli officials still favored the request, which had not been announced before, which highlights the stark differences between the United States and Israel over what should happen in Gaza in the near and long term after Israel completes its military campaign there.

So far, Biden has provided steadfast support for Israel's military campaign in Gaza even as the Jewish state has faced international condemnation amid an attack that has killed some 20,000 Palestinians. But as part of this support, Biden repeatedly insisted that the Palestinian Authority, which currently rules part of the West Bank, should also govern Gaza after eliminating Hamas, and that Biden stresses the necessity of establishing a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu rejects these principles with increasingly strong public statements, making it unclear how the United States and Israel will resolve fundamental differences over the future of the region. American officials say the most pressing issue is determining who will be responsible for governing the small enclave “the day after,” when the fighting in Gaza ends.

Some Israeli officials also prefer to target the Iran-backed Hezbollah group next, a move American officials have worked for weeks to avoid. American and Israeli officials disagree on how harshly to punish extremist settlers in the West Bank. In other words, Biden and Netanyahu are at odds on almost all the key issues that will become decisive the moment Israel ends its “Iron Swords” military campaign.

This division is partly driven by the domestic politics of the two countries, analysts say. After the October 7 attacks, when Hamas militants infiltrated Israel and killed nearly 1,200 Israelis, Israeli voters moved sharply to the right while Netanyahu's popularity declined, and this is pushing the prime minister to embrace the Extremist right as a means of political survival. For his part, Biden is facing increasing pressure from his Democratic base to stand up to Israel and take concrete steps to help the Palestinians confront devastating images of bloodshed and devastation."

“I think Netanyahu and Biden are speaking to their political base,” said Eitan Gilboa, an expert on US-Israeli relations at Bar-Ilan University. He added: “Biden wants to revitalize the Palestinian Authority without clarifying what that means, and he also wants a two-state solution.” Netanyahu rejects both matters.”

The White House faces internal division over Israel and Gaza

The Palestinian Authority has been plagued for years by corruption and weakness, and voters in Gaza ousted the PA from their government in 2006, a year after Israel withdrew from the Strip in favor of Hamas. But US officials say there is no alternative to the Palestinian Authority as a pragmatic force representing the Palestinians, and Biden often talks about post-war Gaza joining the West Bank under the rule of a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority.