JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to land Monday in a Washington consumed by political turmoil, creating further uncertainty about U.S.-Israeli relations at a crucial moment in the Gaza war.
President Biden — who announced the end of his reelection bid on the eve of Netanyahu’s departure — has both championed Israel’s right to wage war against Hamas and chided the prime minister for his management of the conflict. Israeli officials didn’t confirm that the prime minister would meet with the president as planned until the day before takeoff; they now don’t know what the dramatic campaign upheaval will mean for the future.
President Biden announced July 21 he will drop out of the 2024 presidential race. He quickly endorsed Vice President Harris as his replacement. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Immediately after Biden’s announcement, a person familiar with deliberations in Netanyahu’s office said it was “too early” to say how the trip, and Israel’s war effort, might be affected. Like others in this story, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics.
Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday. But it is the chaos of the presidential race that has transfixed observers, with Biden bowing to pressure to step aside and Donald Trump surging after a failed assassination attempt. The fast-shifting political winds could embolden the Israeli leader, analysts said, at a crucial time in Gaza cease-fire negotiations.
U.S.-backed talks in Cairo are reportedly gaining momentum, with the administration pressing a reluctant Netanyahu to accept a deal that would end the fighting in exchange for the release of more than 100 Israeli hostages held by militants. Dozens of the captives are still alive, Israeli officials believe.
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Netanyahu has been accused by critics of prolonging the war for his own political benefit, a charge he denies. He remains adamant that Israel must fight until Hamas has been destroyed, a goal his own generals have said is unachievable.
Officially, Netanyahu is neutral in American politics. But he has long been criticized for aligning with Republicans. And he made no secret of his delight with Trump, who tilted U.S. policy significantly in favor of the Israeli right during his term — moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.
Netanyahu’s tense relationship with Biden has deteriorated greatly in recent months as Israel has defied numerous White House entreaties to increase the flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza and do more to protect civilians. The administration put a hold on 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May, citing their use in populated areas.
More than 38,900 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but says the majority of the dead are women and children.
Netanyahu told reporters as he was preparing to depart Monday that he still expected to meet with Biden and to thank the president for supporting Israel throughout his long career. The prime minister said he intended during the visit “to tell our friends on both sides that regardless of who is elected to lead the American people after the presidential elections, Israel is its most important ally in the Middle East.”
But some of the prime minister’s allies had begun cheering Trump more explicitly, framing cease-fire talks as a partisan U.S. issue. Itamar Ben Gvir, Netanyahu’s far-right national security minister, warned colleagues last week that approving a hostage deal would be “a slap for Trump, which would be a victory for Biden,” according to Israeli media reports. Any agreement, he insisted, should wait until November.
Some political observers here say Biden’s eroding position in recent weeks had already begun to free Netanyahu’s hand in Gaza.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, said U.S. pressure on Israel to rein in its military campaign has eased in recent weeks. The administration has offered little public criticism of escalating attacks in areas packed with civilians, including in Mawasi, an area designated by Israel as a humanitarian zone. Massive strikes there this month targeting senior Hamas leader Mohammed Deif killed at least 90 people, according to health officials.
“The pressure has gone now,” Oren said before Biden’s announcement. “It’s nothing like it was.”
Biden’s team has backed off in part because of signs the attacks are making Hamas more amenable to a deal, Oren said, and what the president “really needs is a diplomatic win to show he can achieve big things internationally.”
U.S. administration officials denied, before the president dropped out, that Netanyahu had been significantly emboldened by Biden’s struggles. But they acknowledged that the president’s mounting problems have coincided with a hardening of the prime minister’s position. Netanyahu recently came forward with last-minute demands that U.S. negotiators feared would stymie the Cairo talks, according to diplomats familiar with the discussions.
Under the new conditions, Israel would not agree to withdraw its forces from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian border, said the diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and ongoing negotiations. Israel would also not allow unrestricted access for Gazans seeking to return to their homes in the north — insisting that its forces be permitted to establish checkpoints to monitor the movement of the displaced.
“The fact that Netanyahu put these conditions out so publicly means he feels more confident,” Oren said.
Netanyahu was certainly paying attention to the churning U.S. campaign, Israeli officials say. “Everyone recognizes that Biden is weak,” said the person familiar with deliberations in the prime minister’s office.
But Netanyahu was far more focused on his own political challenges, they said.
The prime minister is squeezed between the Israeli public, increasingly angry at his failure to reach a hostage-release deal, and his far-right coalition partners, threatening to bring down the government if he agrees to stop fighting Hamas. Eight members of Netanyahu’s own Likud party went public in recent days with a list of “red lines” they could not support in a deal, including Israel’s withdrawal from central Gaza and the Egyptian border.
Netanyahu will be feverishly working to keep his coalition partners in line until July 28, when Israel’s parliament begins a three-month recess.
“The next weeks will be critical,” said the person familiar with deliberations. “Right now the pressure from the inside is far more significant that pressure from the States.”
Before Biden’s move, Netanyahu had no plans to seek a meeting with Trump during his Washington trip, officials said, or even with Vice President Harris, whom Biden quickly endorsed Sunday to take his place at the top of the ticket.
The prime minister was fully aware that no matter the outcome of the November election, Israel would be dealing with Biden for the remainder of his term, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.
Netanyahu is likely to be on his best bipartisan behavior during this visit, unlike in his controversial address to Congress in 2015 when, at the invitation of Republicans, he slammed the Barack Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal. Unlike now, that dust-up occurred just weeks before an Israeli election and was designed for domestic political impact, Plesner noted.
“It’s a totally different situation now,” he said. “Netanyahu needs President Biden every day.”
While many Democrats remain bitter over Netanyahu’s 2015 trip, and scores of them plan on boycotting his address, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday that he had received a “broad preview” of Netanyahu’s speech last week and it did not appear partisan in tone — instead focusing on “how the U.S. and Israel are trying together to face down the terrorist threat” and coordinate on “regional challenges.”
Sullivan acknowledged, however, that “they’re going to keep working that speech until the very last minute, just like we do on our side.”
Netanyahu will be in Washington at the peak of partisan frenzy, between the two party conventions and with Democrats scrambling to figure out their next steps. U.S. officials confided they were nervous about his visit at such a volatile time, worried he may say or do something that scuttles their Gaza diplomacy.
“It’s impossible to have confidence in how this plays out,” a U.S. official said.
Hudson reported from Washington.
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