U.S.–Israel relations have hit an all-time low, and the main cause is the refusal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to modify his stance on the war in Gaza even slightly or just rhetorically. This, in turn, stems from his dependence on a handful of Israel’s most far-right politicians, without whose support his government would collapse. The collapse would result in new elections, which Netanyahu’s Likud party would almost certainly lose, thus ousting him from the post he has held for 17 of the past 23 years.
In short, Netanyahu is placing his own political survival over the health of Israel’s ties to its most important ally—as well as its reputation in the world and the once-blooming prospects for normal relations with its Sunni Arab neighbors, which would thus greatly enhance Israel’s security in a dangerous region and an increasingly anarchic world.
Two dramatic things happened on Monday, neither quite unprecedented by itself but uniquely striking in their back-to-back timing.
First, the United States did not veto but rather abstained from—and thus allowed to pass—a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in the war on Gaza.
It wasn’t the first time the United States has turned away from its usual practice of protecting Israel by vetoing resolutions that criticized the country. In fact, every president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama abstained at least once on resolutions condemning Israel—Ronald Reagan did so seven times—for expanding settlements, invading Lebanon, permitting the murder of Palestinians, or other crimes and malfeasances.
Still, the abstention on Monday was unusual, given the war that Israel is waging and the fact that President Joe Biden had instructed his ambassador to veto similar resolutions three times in recent months.
The second dramatic thing that happened was that, in response to the vote, Netanyahu canceled a trip to Washington, where five of his top advisers were going to discuss possible ways to eradicate the remaining Hamas leaders in the southern Gaza town of Rafah without mounting a massive ground assault, a move that would likely kill thousands more civilians. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had called for the meeting, saying he had less destructive ideas for how to accomplish Israel’s strategic goal of rooting out Hamas—with which he said he agreed.
In other words, Netanyahu dissed Biden and his national security adviser in a way that few U.S. allies had ever done before.
As Alon Pinkas, a columnist for Haaretz, wrote Monday, the actions of the past two days have put Israel “on a collision course” with the U.S. Reciting several rounds of Netanyahu’s dismissive demeanor or obstructive behavior in the face of Biden’s several attempts at constructive diplomacy, Pinkas concluded:
When you ignore U.S. requests, dismiss a president’s advice, inundate the secretary of state with endless spin, casually deride American plans, exhibit defiance and intransigence by refusing to present a credible and coherent vision for postwar Gaza, and actively pursue an open confrontation with the administration—there’s a price to pay.
The U.N. resolution that passed Monday was hardly derogatory toward Israel. The text “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, respected by all parties, leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” as well as “the lifting of all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance.”
The U.S. declined to vote along with the other 14 members of the council in favor of the resolution because it failed to mention Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage, which instigated the conflict. Yet, officials explained, the resolution didn’t contain any objectionable language either. An early draft had called for a “permanent ceasefire,” which Biden (like Israel) opposes until after all hostages are released. The U.S. mission got the language changed so that the cease-fire would last only through Ramadan, with the hope that it might then lead to a “lasting sustainable ceasefire.” Since Ramadan is only for another two weeks, the terms aren’t even as long-lasting as the six-week cease-fire that U.S., Israeli, Egyptian, and Qatari diplomats have proposed in separate negotiations.
Still, Netanyahu condemned Biden for not vetoing the measure, saying that it made the cease-fire not dependent upon the release of hostages. But this objection seems bogus. The resolution demands an “immediate ceasefire” and an “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” An immediate cease-fire, an immediate release of hostages—that sounds simultaneous.
Anyway, it isn’t likely to happen, at least not by the end of Ramadan. Security Council resolutions are supposedly binding, but the U.N. has no enforcement police. Both Israel and Hamas are likely to ignore the “demand.”
So why was Netanyahu so bent out of shape by the U.S. abstention? Because one token of U.S. support for Israel, over the years, is its practice of vetoing Security Council resolutions meant to condemn or punish Israel, even when the resolutions have substantive merit. In this light, the abstention sends a powerful signal—that the U.S. is no longer going to kowtow to Israel just for the sake of kowtowing. The message is particularly potent, coming on top of other recent acts of signal-sending—Biden calling Israel’s bombing of Gaza “over the top,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urging his Israeli counterpart not to launch an offensive into Rafah, and Sen. Chuck Schumer’s call for new elections, warning that Netanyahu’s far-right coalition threatens to turn Israel into a “pariah” state.
But Netanyahu’s response—canceling a trip to Washington by a five-man delegation that he had previously authorized—is another instance of over-the-top behavior. He was saying he doesn’t care what Biden or his national security aide has to say, he doesn’t care what the world—even the United States—thinks about Israel’s actions. A few days earlier, Netanyahu said he’d recently told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he hoped Israel will go into Rafah with U.S. support, “but if we have to, we will do it alone.” Now Netanyahu was saying, in effect, “Screw it, I don’t care what you think—we’re going in alone.”
Netanyahu even charged that Hamas had rejected the most recent cease-fire proposal because of America’s abstention on the U.N. resolution. He then pulled Israeli negotiators out of the peace talks, fuming that Hamas wasn’t going to make any concessions now that the United States has thrown Israel under the bus.
Biden was so outraged by the accusation that he had his national security spokesman, John Kirby, call a press conference to rebut the charge. Hamas rejected the cease-fire proposal—the one negotiated by the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and Qatar—before the resolution came before the Security Council on Monday. The really appalling thing about this, which Kirby didn’t mention, is that Netanyahu threw away a chance to condemn Hamas on very legitimate grounds—to say that Hamas, not Israel, is the chief obstacle to a cease-fire—in order to take a whack at Biden, who remains the most powerful ally he and Israel have.
That’s because Netanyahu doesn’t want to look like a peacemaker, even though he did authorize his officials to negotiate the six-week deal with Egypt and Qatar. He wants to stress his determination to plow into Rafah, damn the rest of the world’s resistance, damn Biden’s and Schumer’s warnings, damn Sullivan’s alternative ideas. And he needs to do this in order to impress his coalition partners, all of whom are far to his right on the political spectrum. For to make the slightest public concession to peace, to even the theoretical idea of a Palestinian state, would alienate some of those partners. Only a few need to quit the coalition for his government to collapse, then there will be new elections, which, the polls indicate, Netanyahu would lose.
Linda Dayan, another columnist for Haaretz, wrote recently of Israel’s problem of hasbara—the Hebrew word for public diplomacy. Netanyahu’s political allies, she wrote, “have embraced a populism that eschews such elitist indulgences as ‘understanding what people in other countries are talking about’ and ‘communicating with anyone outside of your ideological bubble.’ ”
This tendency ties in with a long-standing tendency among Israelis. Recognizing that much of the world is hostile toward their country and their religion, they proudly proclaim a determination—even a defiance—to go it alone if necessary. They are bolstered in this attitude by their transformation of the country into an economic powerhouse and by their improbable victories in multifront wars.
And yet these triumphs—political, economic, and military—would not have occurred without the bountiful support of outside powers, especially the United States. Netanyahu is now actively, deliberately, alienating those powers, including politicians and masses of citizens who have supported Israel.
He seems enamored of the myth of Masada, the ancient fortification in southern Israel, where, in the 1st century A.D., almost 1,000 rebels battled off Roman invaders. It’s a great, and possibly fictitious, myth that ennobles an ethos of isolated bravery. The problem, of course, is that the Jews lost the battle of Masada; the last holdout of rebels died by mass suicide rather than surrender. That ultimate lesson should not be forgotten.
