Netanyahu putting final nail in Biden peace plan’s coffin

Months of US efforts to produce a Gaza War ceasefire are fizzling out and a frustrated President Joe Biden is directly blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the failure. Asked by a reporter on Monday (September 2) whether Netanyahu was doing enough to push forward a truce, Biden tersely answered, “No.”

A US administration official added that Netanyahu “keeps adding conditions to straightforward proposals for a ceasefire.” The official predicted that the president will publicize a final ceasefire proposal by the weekend. “You just can’t keep negotiating this,” the official warned the Israeli leader.

A stunned Netanyahu responded quickly. In a televised statement, he said that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Israel’s ceasefire proposals as “extraordinary.”

He went on to explain that his only caveat was to keep troops on the Gaza border with Egypt. Otherwise, he reasoned, Hamas would be able to rearm with weapons smuggled across the frontier – and thereby undermine a main purpose of the retaliatory onslaught that followed Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel: to make certain such an attack could not occur again.

The back and forth is a tale of erstwhile allies who not only differ on immediate tactics in the brutal Gaza War, which is now in its tenth month, but also harbor different, pressing political needs at home.

Biden is fighting to create a positive foreign policy legacy before he leaves office next January. Last month, key members of his Democratic Party told him he must give up his reelection campaign or risk losing the support of political donors and open the way to victory for his rival, Republican Donald Trump.

Biden is trying to show he still counts as “leader of the