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DECEIVE, DEFY, AND DEFER: NETANYAHU’S TIME-TESTED STRATEGY TO
OUTMANEUVER BIDEN  
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Lev Grinberg
July 16, 2024
972 Magazine
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_ For 15 years, the Israeli prime minister has proven his ability to
scuttle political agreements — while never losing the United
States’ backing. _

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. President
Joe Biden in Tel Aviv, October 18, 2023., Miriam Alster/Flash90

 

Watching President Joe Biden clumsily debate Donald Trump on June 27,
many Israelis could instantly recognize how their own prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, has been able to exploit the weaknesses of the
aging commander-in-chief for so long.

Netanyahu has had a close relationship with his “friend Joe” for
decades, going back to Biden’s days in the U.S. Senate and
especially during the early years of the Barack Obama administration.
According to Biden’s biographer Evan Osnos, the then-vice
president served as a key mediator
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Netanyahu and Obama as tensions grew between the two leaders, with
Biden consistently advocating dialogue and preventing open
confrontations.

The Israeli prime minister knows this all too well. And it is
precisely that intimate and historical knowledge of Biden, American
politics, and U.S. support for Israel that has helped Netanyahu stay
in power almost uninterrupted since 2009, and even more so since
October 7. With this knowledge, Netanyahu has also consistently been
able to rebuff efforts in Washington to achieve its stated goal of a
two-state solution in Israel-Palestine — tactics that the Israeli
prime minister continues to use today to prolong the war
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Gaza.      

On June 14, 2009, Netanyahu delivered a historic speech
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Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, calling to reopen negotiations
toward the establishment of a “demilitarized Palestinian state.”
It was 10 days after Obama’s speech in Cairo
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for “a new beginning” in the relations between the United States
and the Muslim world, including through the fulfillment of a
Palestinian state. But after a year of vacuous talks, Netanyahu
refused to abide by Washington’s demands to freeze settlement
expansion in the occupied West Bank, bringing the negotiations to a
stalemate.

Netanyahu only continued to defy the Obama administration over the
following years, with no political consequences. In May 2011,
Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress, calling for an Israeli presence
along the Jordan River and a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,
and was met with 29 standing ovations
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both Republicans and Democrats. Another speech in Congress by
Netanyahu in 2015 sought to undermine the president’s multilateral
diplomacy with Iran regarding its nuclear facilities. Yet despite
suffering these political and increasingly personal indignities, Obama
ended his presidency by signing the largest ever U.S. military aid
package to Israel, to the tune of $38 billion over 10 years.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. (Moshe Milner/GPO)

Since Hamas’ October 7 attack, Netanyahu appears to be seeking to
repeat his success with Obama — namely by wasting time until the
U.S. election in November, exploiting Biden’s unconditional support
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preventing the implementation of the “Biden doctrine for the Middle
East
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This task is much easier today than it was in 2009: instead of Fatah,
the main Palestinian counterpart is now Hamas; the starting point of
the debate is the October 7 massacre, which provoked immediate
international support for Israel’s lethal response; and instead of
eight years of manipulations, he now needs only four more months — a
piece of cake for Netanyahu.

When Biden laid out his ceasefire proposal
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called on the Israelis to support the plan. It was an attempt to exert
domestic pressure on Netanyahu, while tacitly recognizing that the
United States would not use all its leverage with Israel. In response,
Netanyahu took a page from Trump’s playbook and simply lied
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the Biden administration’s suspension of a weapons shipment earlier
in May — giving Republicans political fodder to attack the
president. 

In his upcoming speech to Congress on July 24, Netanyahu will further
entrench his role in the U.S. elections, and will likely receive
standing ovations from Republicans but also some Democrats who depend
on AIPAC to fund their campaigns. As he did with Obama, Netanyahu
intends to exercise his own leverage and help defeat Biden on his home
turf.

U.S.-BACKED IMPUNITY

It is important to understand how Netanyahu has been able to remain in
power since 2009, even after his government’s disastrous negligence
in the lead-up to and on October 7 — not to mention the obliteration
of Gaza without a strategic end game, which, as well as causing untold
suffering to Palestinian civilians, has needlessly sacrificed
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lives of Israeli hostages and soldiers. 

This is partly related to Israel’s internal politics, where
peacemaking has largely been abandoned for the past three decades in
favor of “military solutions.” To fully comprehend Israel’s
complex domestic politics, we need to be aware of the contradiction
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Israel’s professed democratic rules of the game on one side of the
1967 border, and its military domination of Palestinians on the other.

An Israeli soldier casts an early vote for the general election at an
IDF outpost near Israel’s border with Lebanon, March 22, 2021.
(David Cohen/Flash90)

In 1994, I suggested analyzing the Oslo Accords as a triple
democratization process
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which could dismantle the military regime in the occupied territories,
but also transform both Israeli and Palestinian domestic politics.
After the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in
1995, however, both national political arenas deteriorated, growing
more radical and violent. Hamas’ October 7 massacre, and the
murderous Israeli response, are the lava erupting from the volcanic
core of this radicalization process.

Without U.S. financial, military, and diplomatic support, though,
Israel could have never successfully maintained its 17-year blockade
of the Gaza Strip and its destructive strategy of “mowing the grass
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Unconditional U.S. backing has also allowed Israel to consolidate its
control over the West Bank and expand settlement construction in the
territory, while zealot settlers continue to terrorize, displace, and
kill [[link removed]] Palestinians
with the protection of Israeli soldiers.

This linkage has been key to Netanyahu’s ability to stay in power,
despite his failures: the Israeli public is aware of the crucial role
that Washington plays to ensure Israeli impunity, and Netanyahu has
eloquently convinced the public that he is the politician best able to
cultivate that support.

But Netanyahu ran into trouble. His current coalition — made up of
extremist settlers, and with plans to dismantle the autonomous power
of the judiciary — provoked unprecedented mass protests
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The protests, however, largely ignored Israel’s deeper political
crisis: the absence of true democracy, amid ongoing military rule over
Palestinians in the occupied territories. The illusion
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such military rule could be indefinitely sustained was shattered on
Oct. 7, and yet Israelis lack any leaders willing to acknowledge this
basic fact, or to offer a different political vision for the future.

Thousands of Israeli protesters rally against the Israeli
government’s judicial overhaul plans outside the Knesset, Jerusalem,
March 27, 2023.(Gili Yaari/Flash90)

After the Hamas attacks, President Biden professed his clear support
for Israel, and also cautioned its leaders not to “be consumed by
rage”
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repeat the mistakes the U.S. made in the wake of the September 11
attacks. In contrast to Netanyahu and his extremist government, many
Israelis saw in Biden a true, responsible leader, and hoped that
Washington would help Israel overcome its political ineptitude.

At the start of the ground invasion, Israeli commentators talked about
the time limit of the war — the “sand clock” — assuming that
“big brother” Washington would allow Israel to continue fighting
only until December. Netanyahu, however, had different plans on how to
manage his “private war clock”: most reserve soldiers were
released in January 2024, and he burned time with fruitless ceasefire
negotiations until May 7, when a deal was supposed to be signed. Then
he declared
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Israel still needed to complete the occupation of Rafah, postponing
the negotiations for an additional month, and has since refused 
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end the operation — against the wishes of the Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant, the army’s top brass, and the security agencies —
and escalated the confrontation
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the Biden administration. 

Netanyahu has no clear plans for the Palestinian population in Gaza,
nor for the Israeli soldiers there. He can continue the negotiations
game endlessly, wasting precious time for the lives of Israeli
hostages and troops, as well as the displaced and starving
Palestinians.

In this light, observers would do well to pay attention to how
Netanyahu’s father explained his son’s political tactics. After
the 2009 Bar Ilan speech, Benzion Netanyahu, a notorious proponent of
the Jewish right to rule “from the river to the sea,” explained to
the nationalist base that although his son called to establish a
Palestinian state, he didn’t actually mean it. The father revealed
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his son told him that he would impose such tough conditions that the
Palestinians would reject them, ensuring that any negotiations would
be destined to fail. 

In other words, to maintain the military domination of Palestinians
and present Israel as a democratic and peace-seeking state, you must
be a very eloquent liar. For the past 15 years, Netanyahu has proven
his ability to deceive and maneuver to prevent a peaceful political
agreement — while never losing the United States’ backing. Now, we
are witnessing the tragic consequences of his politics for Israelis,
Palestinians, and the whole region.

_PROFESSOR LEV GRINBERG is a political sociologist at Ben Gurion
University and the author of “Politics and Violence in
Israel/Palestine” (Routledge, 2010)._

_OUR TEAM AT +972 MAGAZINE HAS BEEN DEVASTATED BY THE HORRIFIC EVENTS
OF THIS LATEST WAR. THE WORLD IS REELING FROM ISRAEL’S UNPRECEDENTED
ONSLAUGHT ON GAZA, INFLICTING MASS DEVASTATION AND DEATH UPON BESIEGED
PALESTINIANS, AS WELL AS THE ATROCIOUS ATTACK AND KIDNAPPINGS BY HAMAS
IN ISRAEL ON OCTOBER 7. OUR HEARTS ARE WITH ALL THE PEOPLE AND
COMMUNITIES FACING THIS VIOLENCE. _

_We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to
engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed
by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on
Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is
ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence
Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies._

_This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the
past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and
militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalized
siege on Gaza._

_We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need
your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity
of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians
and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the
fight of their lives._

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+972 MAGAZINE IS A LEADING MEDIA VOICE OF THIS MOVEMENT, A DESPERATELY
NEEDED PLATFORM WHERE PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI JOURNALISTS, ACTIVISTS,
AND THINKERS CAN REPORT ON AND ANALYZE WHAT IS HAPPENING, GUIDED BY
HUMANISM, EQUALITY, AND JUSTICE. JOIN US._

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