President Biden pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Friday to agree to the creation of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza is over and raised options that would limit Palestinian sovereignty to make the prospect more palatable to Israel.
Hoping to overcome Mr. Netanyahu’s strenuous resistance, Mr. Biden floated the possibility of a disarmed Palestinian nation that would not threaten Israel’s security. While there was no indication that Mr. Netanyahu would ease his opposition, which is popular with his fragile right-wing political coalition, Mr. Biden expressed optimism that they may yet find consensus.
“There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” the president told reporters at the White House several hours after the call, their first in nearly a month amid tension over the war. “There’s a number of countries that are members of the U.N. that are still — don’t have their own militaries. Number of states that have limitations.” He added, “And so I think there’s ways in which this could work.”
Asked what Mr. Netanyahu was open to, Mr. Biden said, “I’ll let you know.” But he rejected the notion that a so-called two-state solution is impossible as long as Mr. Netanyahu is in power — “no, it’s not” — and he brushed off the idea of imposing conditions on American security aid to Israel if the prime minister continues to resist.
You must log in or register to comment.
Netanyahu has been out of control since before October 7 happened. He degraded the security of Israel by appointing sycophants in place of competent leaders across the board. He’s also made every bad call on Israel’s actions in the war from a strategic level downward.
Bibi needs to face an election in Israel. His own people will vote him out, then a peace process can begin. Does Israeli law have the means for calling for a special election?
At least biden is putting this kind of pressure on Bibi.
I really don’t understand how people can choose to not vote over his handling of Gaza when trump would just kiss Bibi’s shoes…
Because the people loudly proclaiming that are generally those who weren’t going to vote for Biden to begin with, but find it useful to play the ingenue in the hopes of convincing others not to vote.
Yeah, these loud “proclamations” of not voting for Biden really remind me of the 2016 American election comment’s regarding Hillary on Reddit, sometimes almost word for word…
We both know nothing is going to come of it. Biden was literally bypassing congress to send them weapons. The idea that Biden hasn’t been a boot licker to Israel is revisionist history
It’s because we don’t believe Biden is putting any pressure on him.
Why on Earth do you believe him?
At least biden is putting this kind of pressure on Bibi.
What pressure? The only thing Biden did was the pauses, and he sure didn’t get them because he wanted them.
Biden is slightly better than Trump because he has to manage voters who are more repulsed by genocide. That’s it. Pretending he’s doing anything of note when he’s not even willing to consider limiting aid to Israel doesn’t make sense.
To quote Netanyahu out of all people:
“I know what America is,” Netanyahu said. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”
then a peace process can begin.
I like your optimism but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The war has high public support within Israel, and even though support for Netanyahu is basically nonexistent the right wing as a whole is getting more, not less, support. The idea that the government moves independent of the people’s will makes sense in other countries, but not in Israel.
He’s known exactly what Netanjahu is about for decades and yet has never actually done anything to stop him. This is just more empty rhetoric.
Israel will make some concessions, then as soon as the US delivers more weapons they will go back on them.
Netanyahu is the same person that said US is easily manipulated. I guess he was right.
Netanyahu – who did not hold political office when the recording was made – was dismissive of the United States, calling it easily manipulated.
“I know what America is,” Netanyahu said. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”
You guess?
and raised options that would limit Palestinian sovereignty to make the prospect more palatable to Israel.
So not two-state solution, but the same apartheid just with more steps.
Extra steps? It’s literally proposing to make Palestine a Bantustan on paper - which it kind of is in practice.
Extra steps in a sense that they talk about it, pretend they are the good guys and then formalize it via a bogus law. Right now they are just doing it de facto without acknowledging it.
But that’s what the South Africa did too. They tried to spin it as “we were nice enough to give black people their sovereign lands, they are just not allowed to have any actual sovereign institutions for our safety”.
The one big difference is that Israel doesn’t make it outright illegal to have inter-ethnic relationships, opting to make them harder instead, by doing things like not having civil marriages (which effectively delegates the apartheid policies to the religious authorities) and harassing Israelies that dare to have relationships with Palestinians.
… while still financing the genocide.
This is the most hollow pr stunt i’ve seen out of him yet.
Bibi: No
Joe: Ok, have some more missiles
and he brushed off the idea of imposing conditions on American security aid to Israel if the prime minister continues to resist.
Biden supporters going to the polls to stop fascists at home but a-okay with helping cause the genocide of middle eastern people.
There isn’t really a third option. I’m not a fan of Biden and wanted to see either Sanders or Warren win the Primary back in 2020. And I still think a Sanders win in 2016 would have put the US on a very different trajectory, but ya know, it was Her turn and DNC Primary voters got what they asked for. So now we’re stuck with the reality we have, rather than the realty we want. And the political reality in the US is that the next US President is either going to be Joe Biden or Donald Trump (talk of Trump losing the GOP primary is just wishful thinking and news sites trying to drive clicks). We don’t have an option which doesn’t support genocide in Palestine. So, once again, we’re stuck choosing the lesser of two evils. We either get a President who might ask for Israel to think about not engaging in genocide, and whose other policies are fairly reasonable. Or, we can have a President who will likely ask how he can get in on raping Palestinians while also trying to fuck over the American people as hard as possible. Ya, our politics is currently fucked, but we can’t un-fuck it by letting a bigger dick fuck us all.
They can choose between genocide in Israel, and genocide in Israel with a side of fascism in the US and even more genocide in Mexico and the US. I don’t blame them.
You could say vote third party, but the Dem-Rep axis has as much chance of being voted out as Putin.
Maybe protests could work, but only if at the scale of at least the BLM stuff, but the US is far too divided for that.
The choices are genocide and climate apocalypse, or genocide and climate apocalypse.
