NBC quoted American officials as saying that the divisions between the administration of President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have become more apparent since US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent visit to Israel.
The network reported that Blinken returned from Israel and Netanyahu rejected all of Washington’s requests except for the request that Israel not attack Hezbollah in Lebanon.
NBC quoted American officials as saying that Blinken informed Netanyahu that there is no military solution regarding the fate of the Islamic Resistance (Hamas) and that Israel must acknowledge this, otherwise “history will repeat itself and violence will continue.” But Netanyahu was not convinced by Blinken’s words, according to the source. same.
The network also quoted American officials that the Biden administration is “looking beyond Netanyahu to achieve its goals in the region,” and that the American administration is trying to lay the foundation with other Israeli leaders in preparation for the formation of a post-Netanyahu government.
Several senior US officials told NBC that Netanyahu “will not stay there forever.”
Exacerbating disagreements
This week, the Axios news website reported that US President Joe Biden hung up the phone on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their last call, in new evidence of the expansion of the dispute between them as a result of the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip for 104 days.
The American website indicated that the last time Biden and Netanyahu spoke was on December 23, and the aforementioned incident occurred.
During the past weeks, public disagreements surfaced between Biden and Netanyahu over the way to manage the war on Gaza, and the future of the Strip after the fighting stopped, but these disagreements did not reach the point of stopping or changing the nature of American support for Tel Aviv.
Biden said two weeks ago that Israel had begun to lose global support because of what he described as its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, but he reiterated that Tel Aviv could rely on American support and stressed that he supported its “right to defend itself.”
The US President hinted at the existence of differences in his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stressing that the latter is in a “difficult position.”
