Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heard angry statements from US President Joe Biden several times during the six-month war on Gaza, he was apparently surprised by the intensity of the anger in their recent talks on Thursday-Friday night. Although he immediately began a series of measures to alleviate this anger (by opening aid crossings), he asked his assistants specializing in American affairs to examine “the extent of this anger” and “to what extent it can continue.” He explained to his team that he knows very well that “there are limits to American anger that no president can cross.”

It seems that Netanyahu's biggest concern lies in "another American anger" that he received over the course of the week. It is not anger at Israel, but anger at Israel. Its owner is former President Donald Trump, whom Netanyahu hopes to see winning the elections next November and returning to the White House.

Trump stressed that the war in Gaza must stop immediately, and should have stopped a long time ago, according to what Trump said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper “Israel Hayom,” which is considered Netanyahu’s mouthpiece. It was a very friendly interview with no embarrassing questions. But Trump, who loves strong leaders, considered the continuation of the war a manifestation of weakness in the Israeli leadership. Netanyahu, who grew up in the United States and was nourished by the doctrine of supporting the strong and abandoning the weak, realizes that he must make some change in his policy to satisfy the Americans from both the Republican and Democratic parties. It will not be enough for him to rely on American strategic support.

Netanyahu had held an important meeting hours before his conversation with Biden, with a group of Republican members of Congress, who were sent to him by the Israeli lobby “AIPAC” in the United States. It is said that this meeting angered Biden almost as much as he was angered by the killing of the World Central Kitchen humanitarian relief team in Gaza. Netanyahu informed American lawmakers that the war that Israel is waging in Gaza is not limited to the annihilation of Hamas, but rather is in the service of the entire Western world against the hostile axis led by Iran. He said that Israel is waging this war as a divine message in the service of humanity, and that it is not asking the West to fight with it, but rather to provide it with tools. He made sure to quote the historical leader Churchill when he said: “Give us the tools and we will complete the mission.” He asked them to convey the message to the United States.

In Washington, Biden considered it a message of lies and ingratitude. Netanyahu is not Churchill, nor is the administration withholding tools from him. The support that Biden provided to Israel in this war is unprecedented in American history, even by Netanyahu’s own admission. But the use of these tools was a failure, not only in the eyes of the Americans, but also in the outcome test. Israel set unrealistic goals for the war, none of which it achieved. Six months and the Israeli army, which is considered one of the most powerful armies in the world and possesses the latest and most deadly American combat tools, has been fighting a small armed organization such as Hamas, and it still needs many more months to achieve some of the war’s goals. The American generals who accompany the Israeli army in this war, step by step, do not find an honorable way out of this war for Israel, according to what is reported about them. Some of them say to the Israelis: “You do not fight, but you kill.” They look at the results of the fighting, and they find that Israel killed 34,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom were children, women and other civilians, and of a total of 40,000 armed members of Hamas, 9,000 were eliminated, according to the same Israeli estimates (and the Americans estimate their number at 6,000).

In the absence of a realistic Israeli political horizon for war, the US administration sets a very generous horizon: “Arab readiness to reconstruct the Gaza Strip, on the condition of progress towards radical solutions that prevent the need for another war as a guarantee to prevent the destruction of Gaza again, by establishing a comprehensive peace between Israel and all Arab countries that includes the establishment of A demilitarized Palestinian state living in peace with Israel. But the Netanyahu government is offering counterproductive alternatives that will prolong the war and increase the destruction. It demands its support in the occupation of Rafah, acceptance of the occupation of large parts of the Gaza Strip, and the continuation of the war, with the dangers it carries of expanding its scope towards a regional war in which the American army and all countries of the region are involved, in addition to continuing to kill civilians and causing humanitarian disasters.

Along with this, central elements in Netanyahu's government are busy turning this war into an opportunity to liquidate the Palestinian cause and develop projects to restore Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. The Americans follow Israeli politics well, and realize that those behind these projects are not the Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir parties alone, but rather a strong movement in the Likud Party led by Netanyahu. This Likud movement represents about 40 percent of the party's members, and evaluates its activities openly. Members of this movement belittle the American President personally, consider him weak, and describe him with insulting qualities.

They say that the US administration's criticism of Israel stems only from electoral calculations. They do not hide their desire for President Biden to fall and be replaced by Trump. It seems that this thinking has permeated the entire Israeli street, and according to the latest polls, 51 percent of Israelis hope that Trump will win, compared to 40 percent who hope that Biden will win.

In light of all this, it does not seem surprising that Biden and his team members in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department are running out of patience. What is noteworthy here is that Biden was not the only one who rebuked Netanyahu and threatened to change American policy if he did not fulfill his obligations. Rather, similar and harsher statements were issued by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Communications Coordinator at the National Security Council, John Kirby, and Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, who informed A similar message in a conversation with his counterpart Yoav Gallant. They all requested changes within a few hours or days.

Netanyahu, for his part, understood the message well. At first he tried to minimize the damage, so he issued a statement in which he said that he spoke with President Biden for 45 minutes, and it was a good conversation. Washington even responded to this detail and said: “It was a conversation for less than half an hour,” and listed the warnings and threats that Biden heard to Netanyahu, and made clear what was not. The interpretation is that the president is angry.

Of course, this should not be over-interpreted; The anger of the Americans has limits that cannot be crossed, and Israel was and will remain a strategic ally, and will enjoy huge military support, but political support can be used today as a pressure tool. Netanyahu, despite his ideological differences with the American Democratic Party, knows that there are also limits that he must not cross. Therefore, he quickly implemented Biden’s demands regarding humanitarian aid (opening the Erez crossing, which has been closed since its destruction during the October 7 attack, and increasing aid through the Kerem Shalom crossing), hoping to maneuver on the other two issues: the failure to resolve the Cairo and Doha negotiations, and the failure to cease fire before returning the kidnapped people. . In these two matters, Biden relies on internal pressure tools in Israel itself, which are also having a growing influence. Those protesting Netanyahu's policy are worried about American anger and are using it in their demonstrations. The families of the prisoners find what they are looking for in the current American president, and they cannot wait for him to change. Therefore, we seek to make Saturday's demonstrations, this time, bigger and more massive.

Source: Middle East