Throughout the two-year Israel-Hamas War, Washington was faced with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated thwarting of US efforts to end the fighting and, with it, the suffering of Israeli hostages, their families, and two million Gazans.
Many in Washington sought to persuade the Biden administration to press the obstructive prime minister by withholding arms. Some urged a comprehensive embargo, others toyed with a limited one, and others yet suggested a prohibition on the use in Gaza of American-supplied weapons.
President Joe Biden’s decision to test the proposition by withholding a single shipment of 2,000-ton bombs proved ineffective, if not counterproductive. Ignoring Biden’s unprecedented support for Israel, Netanyahu persisted in defying the president while portraying that limited step as a betrayal of the Jewish state.
Both the advocates of pressure and the president missed the most potent leverage in Biden’s arsenal then and US President Donald Trump’s now: telling the Israeli public the truth. Worse yet, Biden (and on occasion, Trump too) stuck with a failed strategy of not only concealing the truth from the Israeli public but also misleading it.
The most striking example was American officials privately blaming Netanyahu for months for sabotaging ceasefire and hostage release deals, yet publicly pinning the responsibility exclusively on Hamas. This deprived the mediators of both the incentive and means to explore – if not force – a Hamas response.
Americans validated Netanyahu's lies
In a recent interview, Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, confessed as much. He justified their approach by a concern that exposing any daylight between Washington and Jerusalem threatened to harden Hamas’s negotiating position.
The result was a twofold failure: First, there was no daylight, but no deal. Second, American statements validated Netanyahu’s lies to the Israeli public that he had been doing everything possible to bring hostages home, but Hamas would only respond to greater military pressure.
This not only extended the war; it also took the wind out of the sails of the Israeli protest movement, which could have been Biden’s greatest ally in forcing the prime minister to yield. One can only imagine how telling Israelis the truth would have energized the “end the war; bring the hostages home” protests.
Expectations that President Trump would act differently seemed vindicated when, on the eve of his inauguration, he was credited with Netanyahu’s acceptance of the very ceasefire-hostages deal that the prime minister had rejected for months when pursued by Biden.
However, those expectations did not last long. Six weeks later, Netanyahu violated the terms of the deal, resumed the fighting, and stopped all entry of humanitarian aid, with Trump justifying the Israeli move while threatening that Hamas would be “terminated” if it does not “behave.”
The Trump-MBS meeting
While President Trump seems to know about –and enjoy – his unmatched popularity with Israelis, one wonders whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is aware of Israelis’ fascination with him. Those sentiments – reinforced by Netanyahu’s repeatedly anointing Trump “the greatest friend Israel has ever had” and fueling Israelis’ desire for normalization with Saudi Arabia – can be powerful tools in the service of regional stability.
Unlike MBS, on several occasions, Trump has put his popularity to good use in forcing Netanyahu to heel. Still, it is unclear whether the president realizes that one major source of his leverage has just gained further potency.
With the prime minister having entered an election year, the last thing he can afford is the impact on his base and the rest of the Israeli electorate of “Israel’s best friend ever” tweeting that he has had it with Bibi’s intransigence blocking progress on Trump’s plan while risking another conflagration in the process.
Likewise, MBS might not have given thought to the opportunity of affecting Israeli policy on matters of importance to the kingdom by leveraging his popularity. Here, granting in-depth interviews to Israeli TV can do wonders, for no one can persuade Israelis of the prospects of normalization and regional integration more than the one person who can make it happen.
The crown prince might articulate to Israelis three messages: his vision of a peaceful, stable, and prosperous region; his concerns with Israel’s current violent and destabilizing trajectory; and what changes in Israeli policy would usher in the security, economic, and other promises of normalization and regional integration.
Withdrawing Bibi's PA veto
When the two leaders meet today, Gaza will surely be on the agenda – specifically, the need to transition to phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point plan.
With all those involved in making the plan work struggling with the Netanyahu veto over any involvement of the Palestinian Authority – a position that has nothing to do with national security but is imposed by the far-right extremists he had chosen to govern with – Trump’s plan is stuck.
Arab countries that are expected to contribute troops to the Gaza International Stabilization Force refuse to do so absent a PA invitation and involvement, which is viewed as essential in refuting allegations that the ISF replaces one occupier, Israel, with another. With no ISF in sight, Israel will not withdraw from the half of Gaza it presently occupies, and Hamas will not be disarmed.
Under these conditions, no reconstruction will be initiated. Consequently, Hamas will continue to control half of the enclave and Israel the other half. The friction between them will likely trigger the resumption of the war, and phase 2 goes nowhere.
Removing the Netanyahu veto over the PA, though hardly the only impediment, is nonetheless an urgent prerequisite for stability and progress in Gaza. It can also remove one obstacle to Saudi-Israeli normalization. The US-Saudi summit provides an opportunity for the two leaders to coordinate a message to the prime minister: Withdraw your veto or face exposing your self-serving intransigence to the Israeli public.
The writer served as a policy adviser and special envoy to the late prime minister Shimon Peres. He is a fellow with the Israel Policy Forum and the Economic Cooperation Foundation and a member of the leadership of Commanders for Israel’s Security.