by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken returns to the Middle East this week with the goal of getting Israel to reduce attacks that are killing thousands of Palestinian civilians and preventing war from spreading across the region.
But previously unreported details of a showdown between Blinken and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel point to challenges ahead.
During a private meeting in November, Blinken told Netanyahu that the Israelis would have to agree to a series of pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow more aid to flow into the war zone and allow civilians to leave attacked areas.
Netanyahu refused, US officials said on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation in Jerusalem. Blinken then said he would announce the Biden administration’s demand at a press conference, prompting Netanyahu to scramble to get ahead of him by issuing a defiant video statement. “’I told him, ‘We swore and I swore to eliminate Hamas,’” Netanyahu said. “Nothing will stop us”.
The Israeli military began taking pauses of about four hours at a time in some areas within days of the diplomatic clash, despite Netanyahu’s bluster.
That Nov. 3 showdown highlights the evolving relationship between the United States and its most important partner in the Middle East, a relationship that President Biden has accused Blinken of guiding through a spiraling crisis.
Since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, Biden has strongly supported Israel’s war in Gaza, in which the Israeli army, armed with American weapons, has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Gaza. Ministry of Health.
But as Blinken flies to the Middle East for the fourth time since October, Biden and his aides are increasingly fighting with their Israeli counterparts over a number of critical issues, including the need to reduce civilian casualties, the risks of a broader regional war and the configuration of a post-conflict Gaza.
Those disagreements are likely to continue when Blinken arrives in Israel amid a week-long marathon of stops: Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He also plans to visit the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank. Blinken landed in Istanbul on Friday night and is scheduled to meet with senior officials there on Saturday.
“We don’t expect all of the conversations on this trip to be easy,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Thursday. “There are obviously difficult issues facing the region and difficult decisions ahead.”
For Blinken, it’s a New Year’s return to the intense shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East that began last fall, after two years of overwhelming attention on Russia’s war in Ukraine and China. By some measures, it is the most challenging task of his tenure as secretary of state.
In contrast to the Biden administration’s almost unequivocal support for Ukraine, Blinken has been trying to balance support for Israel’s war against Hamas with efforts to limit Palestinian suffering. That has created tensions with some US allies abroad and political pressure at home, including at Blinken’s residence in Virginia, where protesters near the entrance on Thursday fake blood splattered in his government van and held signs calling him a “war criminal.”
Within the State Department, employees have sent Blinken at least three dissent cables since October objecting to the administration’s policy on war.
Miller said Blinken’s priorities in Israel would include discussing “immediate measures to substantially increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza” and plans for the Israeli military to “transition to the next phase of operations” and new steps to protect civilians. and allow them to return to their homes.
Blinken will also speak with officials across the region about the release of the 129 hostages, including about eight Americans, who Israel says are still detained in Gaza. And he intends to address the thorny issues of plans to govern Gaza and the prospects of reaching a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians once this conflict ends.
“There are going to be a lot of difficult conversations,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.
Elgindy was skeptical that Blinken could make much progress toward more protection for Gaza civilians or shaping Israel’s post-conflict plans. “I don’t know how well it’s going to go because they’ve been having the same conversation for three months and they haven’t made much progress,” he said.
The issue of what comes next after the war in Gaza may be the most difficult of all. Biden and Blinken have renewed their calls for a long-term political agreement in which Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state. But Mr. Netanyahu He told reporters last month that he is “proud” having blocked a Palestinian state during his multiple turns as prime minister since the 1990s. “They’re just on different planets,” Elgindy said.
A major problem is the pressure Netanyahu faces from right-wing members of his governing coalition, with whom the Biden administration is increasingly frustrated. On Tuesday the State Department harshly reprimanded two Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, after they advocated for the resettlement of Palestinians out of Gaza.
Calling his comments “inflammatory and irresponsible,” a statement under Miller’s name said the United States had been “clear, consistent and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, and that Hamas is no longer in control of Her future”. and without terrorist groups capable of threatening Israel.”
In a sign of the obstacles Blinken faces, Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, he replied on social media that while he admires the United States, “with all due respect, we are not just another star on the American flag.”
The Biden administration is also concerned that the conflict could erupt more widely across the region. Preventing that was an urgent priority for Blinken’s first trip there, just days after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
The risk appeared to decline for several weeks but has risen again, with a recent bombing in Lebanon attributed to Israel that killed Saleh al-Arouri, deputy political leader of Hamas; increasingly deadly exchanges of fire between the Houthi militia in Yemen and the US military; and persistent attacks on U.S. troops based in Iraq and Syria by militias there.
All of those groups are supported by Iran, which U.S. intelligence officials say does not want a broader war. But regional violence could increase if Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese militia and ally of Hamas, decides to retaliate for the attack on al-Arouri, something it has threatened to do.
And separately, Israel has warned the Biden administration that it could attack Hezbollah more forcefully if US officials do not persuade Hezbollah to stop attacking northern Israel and move away from the border.
But even as Blinken is expected to hold tough talks with Netanyahu, he has continued to approve large arms shipments to Israel without conditions. He is carrying out a White House policy that Biden has overseen because of what his advisers call the president’s decades-long emotional attachment to Israel.
On December 29, the State Department approved the shipment of $147.5 million in 155-millimeter artillery shells and related equipment to Israel, invoking an emergency provision to bypass a congressional review process. That move by Blinken angered some Democratic lawmakers, who have criticized the Biden administration for its unconditional support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Blinken first invoked an emergency declaration on the Israel-Gaza war on December 8 to bypass Congress and send Israel 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition valued at more than $106 million.
As of mid-December, the US government had approved shipments of about 20,000 air-to-ground munitions since the war began on October 7, according to internal US government reports described by US officials. In many attacks in densely populated Gaza, Israel has dropped 2,000-pound bombs, the largest typically used by the military.
But the State Department has yet to approve Israel’s orders for 24,000 assault rifles valued at $34 million. The New York Times reported in early November that although the department’s office that oversees arms transfers supported the sale, some congressional officials and U.S. diplomats were concerned that the rifles would end up in the hands of civilian militias trying to expel the Palestinians from their lands in the West Bank. . Settler violence against Palestinians had been increasing even before the war and has accelerated markedly since October 7.
Biden has implored Israel’s government to curb the violence, even as far-right cabinet officials, particularly Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, encourage settlement expansion in the West Bank. Blinken is expected to raise the issue again during his visit.
Eduardo Wong reported from Washington and aboard the US Secretary of State’s plane to the Middle East, and Michael Crowley reported from Washington.
