Netanyahu, Who Clashed With Biden, Prepares for a Delicate Farewell
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is unlikely to immediately change his approach to the Gaza war following President Biden’s decision to stand aside, even if he may privately welcome the president’s departure from the race, analysts said.
Mr. Netanyahu would most likely have freer rein in Gaza under a potential new Trump administration, but the prime minister must still work with Mr. Biden for the next six months, leaving him with little immediate room for maneuver, they said.
Until January, Mr. Biden will control the delivery of U.S. munitions to Israel, as well as the level of U.S. diplomatic support at the United Nations at a time when global scrutiny of Israel has rarely been higher.
“Of course, Netanyahu benefits from a politically weak Biden, who is blamed by the Israeli right for restraining Israel,” said Mazal Mualem, an Israeli political commentator and a biographer of Mr. Netanyahu. “But Biden is still president and Netanyahu needs him,” she said.
Mr. Netanyahu has clashed with the Biden administration over the scale of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, the delivery of aid to Palestinian civilians and Israel’s failure to set out a clear vision for the territory’s postwar governance. Under U.S. pressure, Israel has slowed its military campaign in Gaza since January and has so far avoided a land war along Israel’s border with Lebanon, where for months it has exchanged missile strikes with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese militia that is allied to Hamas.
By contrast, Donald J. Trump has indicated that he would allow Israel to use greater force in Gaza, arguing that Israeli forces have “got to finish what they started, and they’ve got to finish it fast.” Mr. Trump also supports taking a more aggressive stance against Iran, and his re-election might allow Mr. Netanyahu to conduct more strikes on Iran and its proxy militias like Hezbollah, as well as the Houthis in Yemen.
Still, with more than three months before the U.S. election, it is too early for Mr. Netanyahu to bank on Mr. Trump’s return. Mr. Netanyahu left on Monday morning for Washington, where he is set to make a speech on Wednesday to a joint session of Congress. Before taking off, he said he would use the speech to “tell my friends on both sides of the aisle that regardless who the American people choose as their next president, Israel remains America’s indispensable and strong ally in the Middle East.”
Asked if Mr. Biden’s decision affects Mr. Netanyahu’s approach to Gaza, an Israeli government spokesman, David Mencer, said: “The short answer is no.”
Mr. Mencer added: “We’re going to thwart every future threat to the state of Israel from Gaza, and we will return home all of our hostages. None of that changes.”
In an illustration of the bind in which Mr. Netanyahu finds himself, Vice President Kamala Harris will sit behind him as he speaks on Wednesday. By January, she could be sitting in the Oval Office as Mr. Biden’s successor.
Analysts say that Mr. Netanyahu was likely to try to maintain a functional relationship with Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris while avoiding causing offense to Mr. Trump. The prime minister once had strong ties with Mr. Trump, who helped him forge diplomatic relations with several Arab states and moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all moves that benefited Mr. Netanyahu’s legacy.
But Mr. Netanyahu angered Mr. Trump in 2020 by congratulating Mr. Biden on his return to office, and their relationship is still considered fragile.
Mr. Netanyahu’s initial response on Sunday night to Mr. Biden’s decision provided a template for how the prime minister would approach that balancing act.
Mr. Netanyahu did not immediately comment on Mr. Biden’s departure or thank him for his decades of support for Israel. That diplomatic nicety was left to Israel’s figurehead president, Isaac Herzog, and the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, both of whom hailed Mr. Biden’s relationship with the Jewish state.
But Mr. Netanyahu did swiftly announce that Israel would continue to negotiate for a cease-fire in Gaza, a move that is likely to please Mr. Biden, who has personally pushed for a truce for several months. And the following morning he said that the meeting with Mr. Biden would be “an opportunity to thank him for the things he did for Israel in the war and during his long and distinguished career.”
It is still possible that Mr. Netanyahu will agree to a cease-fire deal once the Israeli Parliament, or Knesset, begins its summer recess at the end of July, according to Nadav Shtrauchler, a former strategist for Mr. Netanyahu.
Without a sitting Parliament, Mr. Netanyahu will be freer to act against the wishes of his far-right coalition allies. Some of them have threatened to bring down the government — a move that requires a vote in Parliament — if Mr. Netanyahu agrees to a truce with Hamas.
Mr. Biden’s announcement “will make Netanyahu more confident that he’ll have Trump as a colleague again,” Mr. Shtrauchler said. “But he’ll still be careful and walk a line that keeps all options open — including a deal during the Knesset recess.”
It is also unclear whether Mr. Biden will change his own approach to Gaza, now that he is unburdened by the need to campaign for re-election.
Some analysts say he could take a stronger line against Mr. Netanyahu, mirroring some past presidents who took stronger stances against Israel in the final months of their tenures.
At the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, his administration entered into talks for the first time with the Palestine Liberation Organization. President Bill Clinton used the final weeks of his second term to make a renewed push for a peace deal between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships. During President Barack Obama’s last month in office, his mission to the United Nations abstained on a Security Council resolution that called for a halt to Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. The United States usually vetoes such resolutions.
In a similar way, Mr. Biden may push “even harder now to end the fighting, since he’s going to want to leave some semblance of quiet behind as part of his legacy,” said Michael Koplow, an analyst of Israeli and U.S. politics at the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group.
But there is no guarantee that Mr. Netanyahu will soften under greater pressure, given how he has already resisted months of U.S. calls for a cease-fire.
“Netanyahu has been making decisions based more on his domestic politics than on Biden’s preferences anyway, and that’s not going to change,” Mr. Koplow said.
Besides, Mr. Biden may simply stick to the same approach — broadly supporting Israel’s war while criticizing certain battlefield tactics and calling for a cease-fire. Even when he was still running for re-election, Mr. Biden repeatedly showed that he was ready to pay a political price among parts of his base for continuing to supply Israel with arms.
That suggests his decisions on Gaza were already “dictated by principle rather than politics,” Mr. Koplow said. “So I don’t think removing the election from his equation is going to lead to significant shifts.”
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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