Joe Biden’s bond with Israel and the Jewish people runs so deep he is said to feel it in his kishkes (that’s “guts”, for the non-Yiddish speakers among you). Biden demonstrated that early in the current crisis by visiting Israel within days of the 7 October massacre, which saw 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, killed, many tortured and mutilated. He demonstrated it again, just as swiftly, with the dispatch of two US aircraft carriers to the region, aimed at deterring Hezbollah and its Iranian backers from attacking Israel from the north – his one-word message: “Don’t.” And he showed it once more just last week, wielding the US veto at the United Nations – making Washington all but a lone voice against the global chorus demanding that Israel end its offensive in Gaza, which has left so many thousands dead.
But there is one last act of service Biden needs to perform for the sake of the Israel he has stood with so long, a task he is uniquely able to execute. He must push Benjamin Netanyahu from power – and do all he can to ensure he does not return. Right now, the focus of US-Israeli relations is on the clock, on how long Washington will give its ally –which it arms – to pursue its stated goal of defeating Hamas, even at the cost of terrible death and destruction in Gaza. Hints that Biden’s patience is wearing thin are getting louder. This week he warned that Israel is “starting to lose [international] support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place”. The signals are that Israel has until the middle or end of January to keep up what the White House calls “high-intensity military operations”. After that, it will have to move to “a different phase” – one that consists of focused, targeted raids on Hamas strongholds, with fewer civilian casualties.
But Biden needs to go much further. He needs to confront Netanyahu – and win.
There are multiple reasons why the avowedly pro-Israel Biden should want Netanyahu out, but start with what happens in Gaza the day after Hamas rule ends. The Israeli leader says he will not countenance any involvement by the Palestinian Authority in running Gaza, not least because that’s what the US is pushing for – and Netanyahu reckons standing up to Washington plays well with his base. But his refusal amounts to ruling out the involvement of any Palestinians at all in running Gaza.
If it’s not Hamas and it’s not Fatah, the movement that dominates the authority, there’s no other substantial Palestinian group left. By opposing Biden’s plan, Netanyahu implies that the only acceptable options for Gaza are rule by a coalition of Arab states – which don’t want the job, and would certainly refuse it without Palestinian participation – or reoccupation by Israel. One is implausible, the other unacceptable.
Netanyahu’s position is that Israel cannot entertain anything that looks like a step toward Palestinian statehood. Witness the remarks of Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the UK – handpicked for the post by Netanyahu – who this week said “absolutely no” to the prospect of a Palestinian state. That stance blows apart a central defence of Israel’s current strategy: that it has to remove Hamas in order to make possible an eventual accommodation with the Palestinian people, in the form of the two-state solution.
There’s speculation that Hotovely was thinking less of Israel’s diplomatic needs than of her own ambition to return to her previous job, as a Likud member of Israel’s parliament. If that’s right, she was merely following the lead set by her patron. For the core criticism of Netanyahu is that he is thinking not of Israel’s national interest at a time of war, but rather his own political future. Given that he is on trial on corruption charges that could put him in jail, he is desperate to cling to the job that will keep him out.
And so he behaves in ways that damage his country but which, he believes, will help him. He devotes precious time and energy to ensuring it is Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs who get blamed for the appalling failures that made 7 October possible – even though the evidence is stark that he himself ignored the warnings of “a clear and present danger” that were put in front of him. He has stayed away from the funerals of the victims of 7 October, and has barely met the families of the bereaved, fearing they would slam him in public.
And he has sat back as members of his far-right coalition make unspeakable threats – calling for Gaza to be erased or burned – and while his security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has a conviction on terrorism charges, hands out weapons to his fellow extremists and encourages settlers as they provoke yet more conflict and violence in the West Bank. All of this is a disaster for Palestinians most obviously, but also for Israel as it seeks to maintain the international support Biden rightly said it is losing. Netanyahu stands by and does nothing, too frightened of the hard right he needs in order to keep his coalition from breaking apart – and whose votes he wants when elections come, which may be soon.
That is the heart of the matter. Israel is led by a man who is fighting only for himself. Which is why one of the heroes of 7 October, retired general Noam Tibon – now famous for grabbing a weapon, jumping in his car and heading down south to rescue his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren from the Hamas men who were poised to kill them – told me: “Benjamin Netanyahu is a huge danger to the state of Israel. While he is in the prime minister’s chair, we cannot win this war.”
Biden may well agree with that analysis. He has no affection for Netanyahu; before 7 October, he refused even to grant him a White House meeting. And yet, he may be wary of acting on that sentiment if it means meddling in the domestic affairs of an ally. But he should put those fears aside. What’s more, there’s a useful precedent.
In the 1990s Bill Clinton, who like Biden, had convinced Israelis that he truly had their interests at heart – even in his kishkes – took on Netanyahu and won. He pushed Netanyahu into peace talks and to sign agreements that the Israeli PM didn’t like – safe in the knowledge that the Israeli public understood that he, Clinton, was acting out of friendship, not hostility. As Anshel Pfeffer, columnist for Israel’s liberal daily Haaretz, pointed out this week, when Netanyahu eventually faced the voters in 1999, he lost – to a candidate committed to pursuing peace with the Palestinians.
The times are different now, to be sure. But Biden has a power to influence events in Israel matched by no one else. He should hear the cry of the families of the hostages held by Hamas, who carry placards bearing a simple message: “Save Israel from Netanyahu”. Biden might be the one person in the world who can heed that plea and act on it. He must.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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