- Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu are barely speaking at the moment.
- Biden last week called Netanyahu's war on Gaza “overreach.”
- Meanwhile, the US Congress is about to approve an additional $14 billion in aid to Israel.
The situation between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is so bad that the two leaders have barely spoken recently.
Last Thursday, Biden publicly called Israel's response in Gaza “overreach.” That may seem low-key given what's happening in Gaza, but it was important to Biden, who was once committed to supporting Israel.
For Prime Minister Netanyahu, it was clearly indecipherable. “I don't know exactly what he meant,” Netanyahu told ABC News' “This Week” on Sunday.
The two leaders met on Sunday for the first time since Biden's remarks, the White House said. During the call, Biden renewed pressure on Netanyahu to consider the safety of Palestinian civilians. Israel is preparing to invade the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, where many civilians have fled, a move the United States has publicly opposed.
But in the four months since Israel began its sweeping retaliation for the October 7 attack, Netanyahu has repeatedly ignored Biden's calls for retaliatory action. Approximately 30,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in the Israeli attack, and Gaza itself was nearly wiped out by the attack.
During a phone call in January, Biden asked Netanyahu to prepare for a post-conflict solution, including a two-state solution. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the idea on social media, saying Israel “will not compromise on complete Israeli control” of the post-war Gaza Strip.
This is a surprising move for the leaders of a country that receives billions of dollars in military aid from the United States each year and is hoping to receive an additional $14 billion from Congress, assuming U.S. lawmakers can come together. This is embarrassing for Biden, and the president's frustration is starting to show.
A new report in the Washington Post says Biden is considering withholding funding to Israel to force Prime Minister Netanyahu's hand, but so far he has done little to embold Israel's enemies. He is said to be resisting it out of concern.
The paper said Biden's aides are encouraging him to more publicly criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's strategy in Gaza. Aides told the Post that this would help distance Biden from the unpopular Israeli leader in an election year.
But that does little for starving Palestinians in Gaza.
“It doesn't really matter how much you turn the comment dial as long as you unconditionally support Prime Minister Netanyahu's military campaign in Gaza,” Ben Rhodes, a former vice presidential national security adviser, told the Post. Basically, you have to do the following: The decision was not to give Bibi a blank check for support. ”
