Netanyahu not budging on Biden’s Gaza war plea

US President Joe Biden has mobilized his three top national security officials to pressure Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept US plans for ending the Gaza war and future Middle East peace.

Biden wants Netanyahu to change battlefield tactics and prepare for negotiations leading to the creation of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu is resisting both proposals, setting off a diplomatic crisis not between the US and a traditional adversary but between Washington and a close ally.

A key policy concern for Biden has been to keep the war from spreading elsewhere in the Middle East and cement alliances with key Arab countries. For Netanyahu, the goals are both to end forever the Palestinian quest for statehood and cement control over territory beyond Israel between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

This is but the latest in a long line of policy disputes between the US, which has long been Israel’s primary military and diplomatic supporter, and the Jewish state, the major economic and military power in the Middle East.

Back in 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower pressured an expansionist Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, which it briefly occupied during the Suez Crisis. At the beginning of the 21^st century, President Barack Obama clashed with Netanyahu over US plans to cement a nuclear proliferation deal with Iran.

Obama signed an accord but his successor, Donald Trump, scotched the agreement, to Netanyahu’s delight.

Now, the Palestinian issue has taken center stage in US-Israeli relations. The tug of war centers on wildly different views about how to end the Gaza War, and how to forge a lasting peace after it’s over.

Beyond the purely geopolitical concerns, current US-Israeli disagreements are colored by