Biden administration officials are laying the groundwork with other Israeli leaders in anticipation of a post-Netanyahu government.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken dialed up pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday over the future of the Gaza Strip, laying bare the Biden administration’s growing frustrations with the Israeli prime minister’s rejection of a proposal last week.

“There’s a profound opportunity for regionalization in the Middle East, in the greater Middle East that we have not had before,” Blinken said during an interview at the World Economic Forum’s summit in Davos, Switzerland. “The challenge is realizing it.”

Asked if Netanyahu is the prime minister for seizing this opportunity, Blinken said, “These are decisions for Israelis to make,” adding, “This is an inflection point."

Blinken’s comments, made during an interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, come just a week after a trip to the Middle East to try to get Israel and Arab leaders to agree on a path forward for Gaza once the war with Hamas ends.

The Biden administration and Netanyahu’s divisions over Israel’s handling of its war with Hamas, as well as the Israeli leader’s refusal to consider U.S. proposals for a post-war Gaza, have only become more pronounced since Blinken’s visit to Israel, according to multiple senior administration officials.

  • cogman@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Slowly, most media outlets are FINALLY getting to the point where “hey, maybe the fact that Israel just leveled 70% of Gaza, all the hospitals, and they’ve shut down aid, food, water, and power, while telling the residents to move up Egypt is a bad thing”

    It’s insane it’s taken this long for Biden to put up even a modicum of pressure on Israel to slow down.

    • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      What pressure? This is crumbs thrown to the portion of his base that is horrified by this.

      All his actions are shipping more weapons and giving more assistance.

      • cogman@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The lightest lightest pressure possible, basically a “maybe you guys should chill out a bit” has been said. Not cease fire, not “we’ll withdraw aid” but rather “this seems a bit much”.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      10 months ago

      Which is aided by being as shitty as possible while Biden refuses to take a hard opposing stance. He doesn’t have to just sit back an wait, the stuff he’s doing is helping bring about that outcome.

  • Fades@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The comments are all so fucking tone deaf, they want Biden to do something yet the more Biden pushes the more upset they become at him for not just stop bibi personally. Get a grip, there’s far more at play here. Ask yourself why Bernie’s latest bill was hot down in such great numbers (of which Biden was not included at all)

    But go ahead and cry that Biden is personally responsible for the genocide Israel has been committing, give me a fuckin break

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      “Guys guys guys, I cant be responsible for their genocide. All I’ve done is given them weapons and ammo for their genocide while they are in the middle of executing it without even having the common decency to lie and call it something else, and protected their explicitly claimed genocide from international repercussions, but I dont see how I can be at all responsible for it!”

    • NoIWontPickaName@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      Directly responsible?

      I don’t know about direct, but he is sure, making sure they don’t run out of ammo.

      So a nice first step would be to, you know, not to do that

  • xenomor@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Unless I see the Biden administration take meaningful action against Israel, I’m not going to believe a goddamn thing they posture about, be it official statements or leaked messaging to the press. They have made it perfectly clear that they are actively and enthusiastically supportive of Israel’s policies of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

  • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The logical conclusion of the creation of Israel is the mass murder and expulsion of the Palestinians. These “frustrations” are meaningless until the West acknowledges that genocide and ethnic cleansing are the raison d’etre of Zionism.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The percentage of ultra-ortodox voters in Israel (who are the ones with the more racist, Jewish Supremacist, viewpoints) keeps growing because the have a lot more children than the western-style Israelis (the ones that we keep being shown as the typical Israeli to make Westerners side with what de facto is a lot more a Theocracy than a modern Western-style country) and the trend shows no signal of turning (as shown by the continued increase in the Far-Right’s vote over the years) so the problem is not at all this specific leader but it’s actually Israeli voters.

    Biden is just doing some theatre so see if he can find a way to deflect the blame for supporting the genocidal Fascists in a country were they keep on getting voted in and all polls show there is more than 2/3 support for what they’re doing. This is just part of spinning it as “we’re doing it to support the poor old Israelis and it’s only this guy who is ‘abusing’ it” all the while sending shipments of bombs over ther in the full knowledge that “this guy” is going to have tem dropped on civilians in Gaza. In other words, it’s the usual hypocrisy and spin of the guys who loudly problaim they’re “anti-racist” all the while sending bombs to help an etnic group genocide a different etnic group they’ve oppressed for decades to steal their land.

  • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Oh he’s frustrated?

    I’m sure that’s an enormous relief to the victims of the genocide Biden encouraged and assisted.

    Blinken is a bullshit merchant of the highest order.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken dialed up pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday over the future of the Gaza Strip, laying bare the Biden administration’s growing frustrations with the Israeli prime minister’s rejection of a proposal last week.

    Blinken’s comments, made during an interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, come just a week after a trip to the Middle East to try to get Israel and Arab leaders to agree on a path forward for Gaza once the war with Hamas ends.

    Blinken’s major achievement on the trip was getting a commitment from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and four other Arab leaders to help rebuild Gaza after the war, multiple senior administration officials said.

    The Saudi crown prince offered to normalize relations with Israel as part of a Gaza reconstruction agreement — a diplomatic development Netanyahu has long sought — but only if the Israeli leader agrees to provide Palestinians with a pathway to statehood, the officials said.

    A source familiar with the discussions between Blinken and Netanyahu acknowledged “the ball is in the prime minister’s court” but cautioned that the Israeli government’s current position on the Arab leaders’ proposal, including the Saudi deal, may not hold.

    According to U.S. officials, that call ended abruptly in a disagreement over Israel’s refusal to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues it has been withholding from the Palestinian Authority since the war began.


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