by Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch
Demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel over the weekend and growing protests pretty much wherever President Biden travels these days underscore the unraveling alliance between two governments whose leaders claim to want the same thing.
PEACE. An end to bloodshed or at least a pause among hatreds. A humanitarian truce.
Tens of thousands of people in Tel Aviv, including families of hostages, on Saturday took to the streets to seek the removal of Netanyahu from power a day before the 74-year-old underwent emergency hernia surgery. Weekly protests in Israel have grown as the war drags on and anger at Netanyahu’s far-right government mounts. The demonstrations (video) were described as among the largest since the start of the war with Hamas in October.
In New York City last week, hundreds of anti-Israel protesters assailed Biden as a “war criminal” outside a high-dollar Democratic fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall. The voices of U.S. dissent follow the president wherever he reaches out to voters.
On Sunday night, the prime minister used a televised address to Israelis to vow to “destroy” Hamas and press ahead with a threatened ground offensive in Rafah. Netanyahu, before undergoing surgery, said he would do “everything” he could to free hostages held by Hamas. He said the Israeli army would move civilians from Rafah, the southern city in Gaza, ahead of its attacks.
BIDEN FACES a new moment of truth in the Middle East as Israel presses ahead with a promised military offensive in Rafah, The Hill’s Niall Stanage writes in The Memo. The U.S. and Israel are expected to hold a virtual meeting today on the planned Rafah operation; an in-person meeting may occur later this week, AFP reports.
Netanyahu last week rejected Hamas’s bid for a permanent cease-fire as an unacceptable condition for hostage swaps, but he later gave the go-ahead Friday to resume talks, which got underway in Cairo. A spokesman for Hamas said the group had not sent a delegation there.
Biden, campaigning for a second term, is regularly met by small groups of protesters, placards and signs and even pointed questions among supporters and foes of Israel, Palestinian sympathizers or more generally younger advocates for peace and humanitarian help for those pinned down in Gaza.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the most senior Jewish elected official in the United States, is pressured on all sides as he tries to help Biden navigate political tripwires for Democrats as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza heads into its sixth month, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports.
COMPLICATING the U.S. debate was Friday’s report that the administration quietly signed off on sending billions of dollars in 2,000-lb. bombs and fighter jets to Israel to use against Palestinians in Gaza. Gen. Charles Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that Israel was not getting all the weapons from the U.S. it requested.
The Wall Street Journal: A secret memorandum that expanded intelligence sharing with Israel after the Hamas attack in October has led to growing concerns in Washington about whether the information is contributing to civilian deaths.
Asked about the U.S. commitment to furnish more weapons to Israel while trying at the same time to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza to respond to the attacks Israel wages with the weapons, Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) was critical of Netanyahu Sunday, adding the Biden administration possesses different types of “leverage,” including weapons supplies.
But his view, the senator told ABC’s “This Week,” is that “until the Netanyahu government allows more assistance into Gaza to help people who are literally starving to death, we should not be sending more bombs.”
