Tag: US President

Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu have finally talked, but their visions still clash for ending Israel-Hamas war

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U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally spoke on January 19 after a glaring, nearly four-week gap in direct communication during which fundamental differences have come into focus over a possible pathway to Palestinian statehood once the fighting in Gaza ends.

Mr. Biden and his top aides have all but smothered Mr. Netanyahu with robust support, even in the face of global condemnation over the mounting civilian death toll and humanitarian suffering in Gaza as the Israelis have carried out military operations in the aftermath of the October 7 attack on Israel.

But the leaders’ relationship has increasingly shown signs of strain as Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly rebuffed Mr. Biden’s calls for Palestinian sovereignty, gumming us what the U.S. President believes is the key to unlocking a durable peace in the Middle East — the oft-cited, elusive two-state solution. Neither side shows signs of budging.

Friday’s phone call came one day after Mr. Netanyahu said that he has told U.S. officials in plain terms that he will not support a Palestinian state as part of any post-war plan. Mr. Biden, for his part, in Friday’s call reaffirmed his commitment to work toward helping the Palestinians move toward statehood.

“As we’re talking about post-conflict Gaza … you can’t do that without also talking about the aspirations of the Palestinian people and what that needs to look like for them,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

The leaders spoke frequently in the first weeks of the war. But the regular cadence of calls between Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu, who have had a hot-and-cold relationship for over three decades, has slowed considerably. Their 30- to 40-minute call on Friday was their first conversation since December 23. Both sides are hemmed in by domestic political considerations.

The chasm between Mr. Biden, a centre-left Democrat and Mr. Netanyahu, who leads the most conservative government in Israel’s history, has expanded as pressure mounts on the United States to use its considerable leverage to press Israel to wind down a war that has already killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians.

There is also growing impatience with Mr. Netanyahu in Israel over the lack of progress in freeing dozens of hostages still held by Islamic militants in Gaza.

“There is certainly a reason to be concerned,” says Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, “The more and more we see political considerations dominating the relationship between Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu, which is likely to continue because of the upcoming Presidential election and the weakness of both leaders, the more we will see them pulling apart.”

In their most recent calls, Mr. Biden’s frustration with Mr. Netanyahu has grown more evident, even though the U.S. leader has been careful to reaffirm his support for Israel at each step, according to U.S. officials who requested anonymity to discuss the leaders’ private interactions.

Yet, Mr. Biden, at least publicly, has not given up on the idea of winning over Mr. Netanyahu. Asked by a reporter on Friday if a two-state solution is impossible while Mr. Netanyahu is in office, Mr. Biden replied, “No, it’s not.”

Aides insist Mr. Biden understands the political box Mr. Netanyahu finds himself in with his hard-right coalition and as he deals with ongoing corruption charges that have left the Prime Minister fighting for his freedom, not just his political future.

Mr. Biden, meanwhile, faces American voters in November, in a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump. Netanyahu and Trump forged a close relationship during the Republican’s term in office. Mr. Biden faces criticism from some on his left who believe he hasn’t pushed the Israelis hard enough to demonstrate restraint as it carries out military operations.

Key Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, this week warned that Mr. Netanyahu’s position on statehood could complicate negotiations in the Senate on a spending package that includes military aid for Israel.

Expect Mr. Netanyahu to “use every trick that he has to keep his coalition together and avoid elections and play out the clock,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum. ”And I’m sure that part of it is a conviction that if he waits until November, he may end up with Donald Trump back in the Oval Office.”

In recent weeks, some of the more difficult conversations have been left to Ron Dermer, a top aide to Mr. Netanyahu and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., and Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. The two top aides talk almost daily — sometimes multiple times during a day, according to a U.S. official and an Israeli official, who were not authorised to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Other senior Biden administration officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, as well as senior advisers Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, have been at the forefront of the administration’s push to engage the Israelis and other Middle East allies as the Biden-Netanyahu dialogue has become less constructive.

Mr. Netanyahu, who has opposed calls for a two-state solution throughout his political career, told reporters this week that he flatly told U.S. officials he remains opposed to any post-war plan that includes establishment of a Palestinian state.

The Prime Minister’s latest rejection of Mr. Biden’s push in that direction came after Mr. Blinken this week said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Israel and its Middle East neighbours had “a profound opportunity” to solve the generational Israel-Palestinian conflict. Asked if he thought Mr. Netanyahu was up to making the most of the moment, Mr. Blinken demurred.

“Look, these are decisions for Israelis to make,” Mr. Blinken said. “This is a profound decision for the country as a whole to make: What direction does it want to take? Does it see — can it seize — the opportunity that we believe is there?”

The Biden-Netanyahu relationship has seen no shortage of peaks and valleys over the years. As vice-president, Mr. Biden privately criticised Mr. Netanyahu after the the Israeli leader embarrassed President Barack Obama by approving the construction of 1,600 new apartments in disputed East Jerusalem in the middle of Biden’s 2010 visit to Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu publicly resisted, before eventually relenting to Mr. Biden’s calls on the Israelis to wind down a May 2021 military operation in Gaza. And in late 2019, during a question and answer session with voters on the campaign trail, Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu an “extreme right” leader.

The path to a two-state solution — one in which Israel would co-exist with an independent Palestinian state — has eluded U.S. presidents and Middle East diplomats for decades.

But as the war grinds on, Mr. Biden and his team have pressed the notion that there is a new dynamic in the Middle East in which Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbours stand ready to integrate Israel into the region once the war ends, but only if Israel commits to a pathway to a Palestinian state.

Mr. Biden has proposed that a “revitalised” Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank, could run Gaza once combat ends. Mr. Netanyahu has roundly rejected the idea of putting the Palestinian Authority, which is beset by corruption, in charge of the territory.

Mr. Netanyahu argues that a Palestinian state would become a launchpad for attacks on Israel. So Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “That collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can we do?”

White House officials have sought to play down Mr. Netanyahu’s public rejection of Mr. Biden’s call for a two-state solution, noting that the Prime Minister’s rhetoric is not new.

They hold out hope Israel could eventually come around to accepting a Palestinian state that comes with strong security guarantees for Israel.

“I don’t think Mr. Biden has any illusions about Netanyahu,” said Daniel Kurtzer, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt during the Bill Clinton administration and to Israel under George W. Bush. “But I don’t think he’s ready to slam the door on him. And that’s because he gets the intersection between the policy and the politics.”

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In Selma, Biden says right to vote remains under assault

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President Joe Biden used the searing memories of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday” to recommit to a cornerstone of democracy, lionising a seminal moment from the civil rights movement at a time when he has been unable to push enhanced voting protections through Congress and a conservative Supreme Court has undermined a landmark voting law.

“Selma is a reckoning. The right to vote … to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it anything’s possible,” Mr. Biden told a crowd of several thousand people seated on one side of the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a reputed Ku Klux Klan leader.

“This fundamental right remains under assault. The conservative Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act over the years. Since the 2020 election, a wave of states and dozens and dozens of anti-voting laws fueled by the ‘Big Lie’ and the election deniers now elected to office,” he said.

As a candidate in 2020, Mr. Biden promised to pursue sweeping legislation to bolster protection of voting rights. Two years ago, his 2021 legislation, named after civil right leader John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman, included provisions to restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to bankroll political causes anonymously.

It passed the then-Democratic-controlled House, but it failed to draw the 60 votes needed to advance in a Senate under control by Mr. Biden’s party. With Republicans now running of the House, passage of such legislation is highly unlikely.

“We know we must get the votes in Congress,” Mr. Biden said, but there seems no viable path right now.

The visit to Selma was a chance for Mr. Biden to speak directly to the current generation of civil rights activists. Many feel let down because of the lack of progress on voting rights and they are eager to see his administration keep the issue in the spotlight.

Few moments have had as lasting importance to the civil rights movement as what happened on March 7, 1965, in Selma and in the weeks that followed.

Some 600 peaceful demonstrators led by Lewis and fellow activist Hosea Williams had gathered that day, just weeks after the fatal shooting of a young Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by an Alabama trooper.

Mr. Lewis and the others were brutally beaten by Alabama troopers and sheriff’s deputies as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the start of what was supposed to be a 54-mile walk to the state Capitol in Montgomery as part of a larger effort to register Black voters in the South.

“On this bridge, blood was given to help redeem the soul of America,” Mr. Biden said.

The images of the police violence sparked outrage across the country. Days later, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. led what became known as the “Turnaround Tuesday” march, in which marchers approached a wall of police at the bridge and prayed before turning back.

President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eight days after “Bloody Sunday,” calling Selma one those rare moments in American history where “ history and fate meet at a single time. ” On March 21, King began a third march, under federal protection, that grew by thousands by the time they arrived at the state Capitol. Five months later, Johnson signed the bill into law.

This year’s commemoration came as the historic city of roughly 18,000 was still digging out from the aftermath of a January EF-2 tornado that destroyed or damaged thousands of properties in and around Selma. The scars of that storm were still evident on Sunday. Blocks from the stage where Mr. Biden spoke, houses sat crumbled or without roofs. Orange spray paint marked buildings beyond salvage with instructions to “tear down.”

“We remain Selma strong,” Mayor James Perkins said, adding that “we will build back better.” He thanked Mr. Biden for approving a disaster declaration that helped the small city with the cost of debris cleanup and removal.

Before Mr. Biden’s visit, the Rev. William Barber II, a co-chair of Poor People’s Campaign, and six other activists wrote Mr. Biden and members of Congress to express their frustration with the lack of progress on voting rights legislation. They urged Washington politicians visiting Selma not to sully the memories of Lewis and Williams and other civil rights activists with empty platitudes.

“We’re saying to President Biden, let’s frame this to America as a moral issue, and let’s show how it effects everybody,” Mr. Barber said in an interview.

Among those sharing the stage with Mr. Biden before the march across the bridge were Mr. Barber, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III and the Rev. Al Sharpton. On the bridge crossing, marchers sang “This Little Light of Mine” and “We Shall Overcome” and, following tradition, once they reached the point where Lewis and others were told in 1958 that they were on an unlawful march, they stopped and prayed.

Water bottles were passed out to some who had gathered to hear Mr. Biden and at least one person was taken away on a stretcher because of the upper-70s heat. Some had waited hours in the sun before relief came from shadows cast from nearby building.

Delores Gresham, 65, a retired health care worker from Birmingham, arrived four hours early, grabbing a front-row spot so her grandchildren could hear the president and see the commemoration.

“I want them to know what happened here,” she said.

In his remarks, Mr. Biden said, “Everyone should know the truth of Selma.” And the president took a veiled dig at a high-profile Republican, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, when he said: “We should learn everything. The good, the bad, the truth, who we are as a nation.”

Mr. DeSantis’ administration has blocked a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies from being taught in high schools, saying it violates state law and is historically inaccurate. Last year, he signed legislation that restricts certain race-based conversations and analysis in schools and businesses. More recently, his budget office called on state colleges to submit spending information on programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory.

Two years ago on the anniversary, Mr. Biden issued an executive order directing federal agencies to expand access to voter registration, called on the heads of agencies to come up with plans to give federal employees time off to vote or volunteer as nonpartisan poll workers, and more.

But many federal agencies are lagging in meeting the voting registration provision of Biden’s order, according to a report published Thursday by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

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