US Struggles to Sway Israel on Its Treatment of Palestinians. Why Netanyahu Is Unlikely to Yield

US President Joe Biden listens to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he reads a statement in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, amid the battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
US President Joe Biden listens to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he reads a statement in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, amid the battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
TT
20

US Struggles to Sway Israel on Its Treatment of Palestinians. Why Netanyahu Is Unlikely to Yield

US President Joe Biden listens to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he reads a statement in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, amid the battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
US President Joe Biden listens to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he reads a statement in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, amid the battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)

President Joe Biden’s administration keeps pressing Israel to reengage with Palestinians as partners once fighting in Gaza is over and support their eventual independence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps saying no.

Even on actions to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians, the two allies are far apart.

That cycle, frustrating to much of the world, seems unlikely to end, despite US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's fourth urgent diplomatic trip this week to the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas war started. Though the United States, as Israel’s closest ally and largest weapons supplier, has stronger means to apply pressure on Israel, it shows no willingness to use them.

For both Netanyahu and Biden, popular opinion at home and deep personal conviction in the rightness of Israel’s cause, and each man’s battle for his own short-term political survival, are all combining to make it appear unlikely that Netanyahu will yield much on the US demands regarding the Palestinians, or that Biden will get much tougher in trying to force them.

Support of Israel is a bedrock belief of many American voters. Biden's presidential reelection bid this year puts him up against Republicans vying to outdo one another in support for Israel. For his part, Netanyahu is fighting to stay in office in the face of corruption charges.

Some experts warn it's a formula that may lock the US into deeper military and security engagement in the Middle East as hostilities worsen and Palestinian civilians continue to suffer.

“It’s a self-defeating policy,” said Brian Finucane, a former policy adviser in the State Department on counterterrorism and the use of military force.

“What may be expedient in terms of short-term domestic politics may not be in the long-term interests of the United States,” said Finucane, who is now a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group research organization. “Particularly if it results in the United States involving itself in further unnecessary wars in the Middle East.”

The administration says Biden's approach of remaining Israel’s indispensable military ally and supporter is the best way to coax concessions from the often intractable Netanyahu, whose government ministers were trumpeting their rejection of some of the US requests even as Blinken was still in the region.

Since Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, the US has rushed arms and other aid to Israel, deployed forces to the region to confront escalated attacks by Hamas' Iran-backed allies, and quashed moves in the United Nations to condemn Israel's bombing of Palestinian civilians.

On Thursday US time, the same day Blinken was wrapping up his diplomatic mission, US warships and aircraft hit targets in Yemen, hoping to quell attacks that the country's Iran-allied Houthi militias have launched on commercial shipping in the Red Sea since Israel started its devastating offensive in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

American officials claim modest success for Blinken's latest diplomatic efforts. He secured limited, conditional support from Arab leaders and Türkiye for planning for reconstruction and governance in Gaza after the war ends. But prospects are uncertain because Israel’s far-right government is not on board with several key points.

The Biden administration has placed a particular premium on Israel reducing the number of civilian casualties in its military operations. The US urging seemed to have some effect in recent days, as Israel began to withdraw some troops from northern Gaza and moved to a less-intensive campaign of airstrikes.

Israel has been not just uncooperative, but also openly hostile toward some smaller American requests, such as when Blinken pressed Israel to turn over the tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which Israel has refused to do.

“We will continue to fight with all of our might to destroy Hamas, and we will not transfer a shekel to the PA that will go to the families of Nazis in Gaza,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote on X, in a message welcoming Blinken to Israel on Tuesday.

But the biggest US disagreement with Israel has been with Netanyahu’s refusal to consider the creation of a Palestinian state. Arab states say a commitment on that point is essential to convincing them to participate in and contribute to postwar planning for Gaza.

Israelis and Americans are far apart on the matter.

The Palestinians have been divided politically and geographically since Hamas, a militant group sworn to Israel’s destruction, overran Gaza in 2007, leaving internationally backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with self-rule over isolated enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The US wants Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to undergo administrative reforms before setting up a unified government in Gaza and the West Bank, as a precursor to statehood.

Blinken and his aides believe that Netanyahu — or his successor should Israel hold early elections — will eventually realize that Palestinian statehood is the key to Israel’s long-term security and accept it because it will have the effect of isolating Iran and its proxies, which are the biggest threat to Israel and the region.

“From Israel’s perspective, if you can have a future where they’re integrated into the region, relations are normalized with other countries, where they have the necessary assurances, commitments, guarantees for their security — that’s a very attractive pathway,” Blinken said in Cairo, his last stop. “But it’s also clear that that requires a pathway to a Palestinian state. We’ve heard that from every single country in the region.”

Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, called Blinken's remarks “tone deaf.” For Israelis, the US push to revive negotiations for Palestinian statehood signals that American leaders haven't realized how Israeli public opinion has hardened on Palestinian issues over the years, and especially since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.

The Israeli public felt “hurt, insulted, fearful and concerned that this is the way our allies are talking,” Oren said.

Ultimately, he said, US and Israeli interests don't always converge. “At the end of the day, there’s a limit, because if (Biden) says stop, we’re not going to stop,” he said.

Israeli leaders know they’ll need to make some concessions to the United States, Oren said. Some they have already made, like letting limited amounts of fuel into the Gaza Strip, something Netanyahu adamantly refused to do in the early days of the war.

Biden has resisted calls from some in his Democratic Party to use US leverage with Israel, chiefly US military support, to try to force the issue.

The administration spoke out publicly against a move by some Democratic senators to tie US military aid to Israel to ensuring that Israel take more concrete steps to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza. The administration says continuing to support Israel's defense is in the interests of US national security. Since then, it's twice declared emergencies to authorize new arms sales to Israel without Congress' OK.

Another attempt to pressure the Biden administration and Israel is expected next week, when Sen. Bernie Sanders plans a floor vote on compelling the State Department to tell Congress whether Israel is complying with international humanitarian law.

The United States also has some real incentives to use in encouraging Israel to improve its treatment of Palestinians, including when it comes to steering Israel and Israeli popular opinion toward a long-term political resolution. Israel knows the US is likely to be key in rallying any Arab financial and political support for postwar Gaza, and to Israel's deep desire to normalize relations with Arab nations, said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer for the Washington-based Israel Policy Forum.

But few expect big changes under Netanyahu. And some are skeptics on Biden.

“Blinken has turned into a political analyst who talks about things that may or may not happen,” said Hani al-Masri, director-general of the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies.

The Biden administration “seems helpless in the face of Netanyahu’s government,” al-Masri said. "What is happening in the case of Israel makes it seem as if it is not serious in all the positive statements it makes about the Palestinian state and Palestinian rights.”



Seating Plan for a Pope’s Funeral – It’s Complicated, or Compliqué

Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
TT
20

Seating Plan for a Pope’s Funeral – It’s Complicated, or Compliqué

Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)

They may be the most powerful people on earth, but for the seating arrangement at Pope Francis' funeral on Saturday, all foreign leaders will play second fiddle to the Argentines and Italians and surrender to the whims of the French alphabet.

About 130 foreign delegations had so far expressed their desire to attend the funeral, the Vatican said on Friday, and more were expected to do so throughout the day. Those include around 50 heads of state who have been confirmed as attending, among them US President Donald Trump and 10 reigning monarchs.

Apart from the VIPs, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the funeral in St. Peter's Square, which starts at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Saturday. Italian police have laid on one of the most complex security operations in decades.

The official delegations will sit at a section to the right of the altar at the top of the steps leading toward St. Peter's Basilica.

Pride of place goes to Argentina, Francis' native country, whose president, Javier Milei, will sit in the front row. Milei, a maverick right-wing libertarian, had heaped insults on Francis while he was campaigning in 2023, calling him an "imbecile who defends social justice". But the president shifted his tone after he took office that year.

Next comes Italy, the country that surrounds the Vatican and which agreed in 1929 to recognize its sovereignty as the world's smallest state. It gets the second-best seats in the VIP section also because the pope is bishop of Rome and primate of the Catholic bishops of Italy.

That is when the alphabet in French – still considered the language of diplomacy – kicks in for the other delegations. The countries following Italy are ordered according to their names in French and not in their native languages.

So, it is Etats Unis and not United States, Allemagne instead of Deutschland (Germany), and Pays-Bas instead of Nederland (The Netherlands).

Royalty will take precedence. Reigning monarchs -- expected to include royalty such as the kings and queens of Spain and Belgium and Prince Albert of Monaco -- will be seated in front of other heads of state.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Friday that no distinction would be made between Catholic and non-Catholic royalty for the seating order. After the royals come the remaining heads of state. Trump, who attracted criticism from Francis because of his immigration policies, will sit ahead of many other leaders because Etats Unis begins with an "E".

That alphabetic logic means that Trump - currently engaged in trying to get a peace deal in the war in Ukraine - will not be sitting near Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Former US President Joe Biden, who has been the target of constant criticism by Trump, is attending the funeral, but will not be part of the official US delegation, a diplomatic source said. This means Biden, a lifelong Catholic, should be sitting further back, with other VIPs.