US patience wearing thin with Netanyahu and Abbas

The US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer – a Democrat and the highest-ranking Jewish official in US history – has called for the removal of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, seeing both as representing the politics of the past.

In an incendiary intervention, Schumer – a longtime and stalwart supporter of Israel – told the Senate that the continuing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is testing US patience and that the lack of vision by both current Israeli and Palestinian leaders for the future beyond the war is also at variance with US policy.

Of the Israeli prime minister, he said: “Nobody expects Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the things that must be done to break the cycle of violence, to preserve his credibility on the world stage, to work to a two-state solution.”

Turning to Netanyahu’s counterpart in Ramallah, Schumer was equally forthright: “For there to be any hope of peace in the future, Abbas must step down and be replaced by a new generation of Palestinian leaders who will work towards attaining peace with a Jewish state.”

Reflecting on his fellow Democrat’s comments, US President Joe Biden said Schumer had made “a good speech”, adding that: “I think he expressed a serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans.”

Schumer’s speech came at the end of a week where Israeli and Palestinian politics showed how far away they are from the kind of change that Schumer rightly says is necessary.

Shifting factional politics has made Netanyahu’s position more secure. On March 12, Gideon Saar – a key powerbroker in the ruling coalition and an ally of Netanyahu’s biggest rival Benny Gantz – announced he was pulling out of his alliance with Gantz and