caption,
Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected US calls for the creation of a future Palestinian state
Item information
- Author: Mark Lowen
- Scrolling, from BBC News in Jerusalem
41 minutes ago
A senior member of Israel's War Cabinet has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not telling the truth about military objectives in Gaza.
Netanyahu publicly rejected U.S. pressure to create a future Palestinian state and insisted the offensive would continue “until complete victory.”
But General Gadi Eisenkot said those who advocated a “total defeat” of Hamas were not “telling the truth.”
His son was killed in fighting in Gaza.
He also said Netanyahu bore “clear and unequivocal responsibility” for the failure to protect his country on October 7 and called for new elections because there was “no trust” in Israel's current leadership.
In its surprise attack in southern Israel, Hamas killed around 1,300 people and took 240 hostages.
Nearly 25,000 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since then, according to the Hamasrun Health Ministry.
The tensions between the Cabinet and reports that the prime minister and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are barely speaking to each other come at a time when the rift between Israel and its Western allies is widening.
After Netanyahu's comments about creating a Palestinian state, White House national security adviser John Kirby said the United States and Israel “clearly see things differently.”
A State Department spokesman said there would be no way to solve Israel's security challenges without a Palestinian state.
The White House said President Joe Biden discussed a twostate solution with Netanyahu during a phone call on Friday (Jan 19) the first in almost a month.
Biden later spoke to reporters in Washington and when one of them asked whether a twostate solution was impossible with Netanyahu in office, he replied: “No, that's not the case.”
“There are different types of twostate solutions. There are several countries that are members of the United Nations and … do not have their own armed forces,” Biden said.
But Netanyahu has spent his career opposing a Palestinian state, and last month he boasted that he was proud to have avoided it.
The moment of further dissent from the Biden administration will deepen the sense of its growing international isolation.
The United States has repeatedly attempted to influence Israel's military strategy throughout this conflict. They called for more precisely controlled attacks in Gaza instead of largescale airstrikes, delayed or canceled the ground invasion and engaged in talks on a twostate solution in which Israel would be a neighbor to a future Palestinian state, with a role for the Palestinian Authority.
But the appeals were frequently rebuffed by Netanyahu in tense meetings with U.S. officials, deepening frustration in some American circles over President Biden's unconditional support for Israel.
Given the preponderance of death in this conflict, Israel's allies hope that life can be restored with the dormant twostate plan as the only path to achieving lasting peace.
caption,
The White House said the United States and Israel “clearly see things differently.”
But Netanyahu's comments seem to show that he wants exactly the opposite.
He is showing that he wants to take a position that he hopes will be more consistent with a future Donald Trump administration. This would be a strategy that could serve to give your old American friend “red meat” to rally his proIsrael supporters in a US election year.
In Israel, an increasingly unpopular prime minister is turning to the radical right that supports his government.
A recent poll found that only 15% of Israelis want him to keep his job after the war.
And while most Israelis continue to support military action against Hamas, most now say they want to prioritize repatriating the roughly 130 remaining hostages over the potentially impossible goal of destroying Hamas.
His recent statements about a future Palestinian state are also a rejection of Arab attempts to mediate the conflict.
Saudi Arabia presented him with the prize for normalizing relations with Israel under a ceasefire agreement that includes a twostate solution.
But Israel's prime minister appears to have staked his political survival on a hardline antiPalestinian stance.
He can no longer sell himself as “Mister Security” after the worst attacks in history against Israel took place under his watch.
Now he is “Mr. Nonindependent Palestine”: a position he believes reflects the public mood, which, while increasingly feckless than its prime minister, is still too traumatized to imagine a neighboring Palestinian state.