International

Netanyahu faces delicate balancing act in US after Biden exits race

Published

2 months ago

July 23, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu faces delicate balancing act in US after Biden exits race

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the US this week under pressure to end the Gaza war, from both Israelis and the US administration. How might the political turbulence in Washington shape the trip and future relations?

Mr Netanyahu is set to meet Joe Biden – if the president has recovered from Covid-19 – and address a joint session of Congress, the only foreign leader to do so for a fourth time.

The trip offers him a platform for a reset with Washington after months of tensions over his hardline approach to the war, and an opportunity to try and convince Israelis that he hasn’t undermined relations with their most important ally.

But it is overshadowed by President Biden’s decision not to seek re-election, highlighting political uncertainties about Israel’s next partner in the White House and possibly eclipsing some of the attention on Mr Netanyahu’s visit.

The prime minister got a lot of unwelcome attention in Israel until the moment he boarded the plane.

A drumbeat of protests demanded that he stay home and focus on a ceasefire deal with Hamas to free Israeli hostages.

“Until he has signed the deal that’s on the table, I do not see how he picks up and flies across the Atlantic to address the American political chaos,” said Lee Siegel, one of the family members who has come out to demonstrate. His 65-year-old brother Keith is a captive in Gaza.

The trip is a political move, he added, unless Mr Netanyahu stops being a “hurdle” and signs the ceasefire agreement.

Mr Siegel reflected a widespread view that Mr Netanyahu is slow-rolling the process for his own political reasons, roiling his negotiators when he recently threw new conditions into talks that seemed to be making progress.

The prime minister has been accused of bowing to pressure from two far-right cabinet ministers who’ve threatened to bring down his government if he makes concessions to Hamas.

These perceptions have added to frustrations in the White House, which announced the latest formula for talks and had been expressing optimism an agreement could be achieved.

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Mr Biden remains one of the most pro-Israel presidents to sit in the Oval Office, a self-declared Zionist who’s been lauded by Israelis for his support and empathy, cemented by his flight to Israel just days after the Hamas attacks on 7 October.

But since then, he’s grown alarmed at the cost of Mr Netanyahu’s demand for a “total victory” against Hamas in Gaza.

The administration is frustrated with the Israeli prime minister for rejecting a post war solution that involves pursuing a Palestinian state.

It’s angry with him for resisting appeals to do more to protect Palestinian civilians and increase the flow of aid to them. It’s facing a domestic backlash over the mounting death toll in Gaza. And it’s worried that the conflict is spreading to the region.

As Joe Biden’s presidency weakened in the swirl of controversy over his abilities, analysts said there might be less room for him to keep up the pressure on the Israeli prime minister.

But Mr Biden’s decision to drop out of the race could actually have strengthened his hand, says Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister and a critic of Mr Netanyahu.

“He is not a lame duck in regard to foreign policy, in a way he’s more independent (because) he doesn’t have to take into account any impact on the voters,” Mr Barak told the BBC.

“With regard to Israel probably he feels more of a free hand to do what really needs to be done.”

Mr Barak believes it was a mistake for Congress to invite Mr Netanyahu to speak, saying that many Israelis blame him for policy failures that allowed the Hamas attack to happen, and three out of four want him to resign.

“The man does not represent Israel,” he said. “He lost the trust of Israelis…And it kind of sends a wrong signal to Israelis, probably a wrong signal to Netanyahu himself, when the American Congress invites him to appear as if he is saving us.”

Whatever politics he may be playing, Mr Netanyahu insists military pressure must continue because it has significantly weakened Hamas after a series of strikes against the military leadership.

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In comments before departing Israel, he suggested that would be the tone of his meeting with President Biden.

“It will also be an opportunity to discuss with him how to advance in the months ahead the goals that are important for both our countries,” he said, “achieving the release of all our hostages, defeating Hamas, confronting the terror axis of Iran and its proxies and ensuring that all Israel’s citizens return safely to their homes in the north and in the south.”

He’s expected to bring the same message to congress, “seeking to anchor the bipartisan support that is so important to Israel”.

The reality is that Mr Netanyahu’s polices have fractured that bipartisan support. The Republicans are rallying around him, but criticism from Democrats has grown.

The Democratic Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer caused a small earthquake in Washington recently when he stood up in the chambers and said Mr Netanyahu was one of the obstacles standing in the way of a lasting peace with Palestinians.

“I hope the prime minister understands the anxiety of many members in congress and addresses them,” the former US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, told the BBC at the weekend. He’d been addressing one of the many rallies demanding a hostage release.

That includes “on humanitarian issues and to articulate that this fight isn’t with the Palestinian people, it’s with Hamas.”

It’s a message that Kamala Harris would repeat if she were to become the Democratic nominee. There’d be no change in US policy: a commitment to Israel’s security while pushing for an end to the Gaza conflict and a plan for the Day After embedded in a regional peace with Arab states.

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But there might be a difference in tone.

Ms Harris does not share Mr Biden’s long history with and emotional ties to Israel. She’s from a different generation and “could more closely align with the sentiments of younger elements of the Democratic party,” says Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East.

“That’s a stance more likely to include restrictions on weapons, on munitions from the United States for use in Gaza,” he said.

Mr Netanyahu could very well use the visit to steer the conversation from the controversy over Gaza to the threat from Iran, a topic with which he’s far more comfortable, especially after the recent escalation with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But his main audience will be domestic, says Tal Shalev, the diplomatic correspondent at Israel’s Walla News.

He wants to revive his image as “Mr America,” she says, the man who can best present Israel to the US, and to restore his image which was shattered by the October 7 attacks.

“When he goes to the US and speaks in front of Congress and [has] a meeting in the White House, for his electoral base, it’s the old Bibi is back again,” she says, referring to the prime minister by his nickname. “This is not the failed Bibi who was responsible for the seventh of October. This is the old Bibi who goes to the Congress and gets the standing ovations.”

It also gives him an opportunity to pursue connections with the former President Donald Trump at a time of great political flux in Washington.

“Netanyahu wants President Trump to win,” she says, “And he wants to make sure that he and President Trump are on good terms before the election.”

There is a widespread view that Mr. Netanyahu is playing for time, hoping for a Trump win that might ease some of the pressure he’s been facing from the Biden administration.

“There is a near-universal perception that Netanyahu is eager for a Trump victory, under the assumption that he will then be able to do whatever he wants,” writes Michael Koplow of Israel’s Policy Forum.

“No Biden pressuring him on a ceasefire or on West Bank settlements and settler violence… There are many reasons to doubt this reading of the landscape under a Trump restoration, but Netanyahu likely subscribes to it.”

The question is whether that pressure from Biden will ease as he steps away from the presidential race, or whether he will in fact use his remaining months in office to focus on achieving an end to the Gaza war.

Netanyahu faces delicate balancing act in US after Biden exits race

BBC

International

UN investigator accuses Israel of starvation campaign in Gaza

Published

9 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Trends Admin

Displaced Palestinian children gather to receive food at a government school in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 19, 2024, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)

UN investigator accuses Israel of starvation campaign in Gaza

UNITED NATIONS: The UN independent investigator on the right to food accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians during the war in Gaza, an allegation that Israel vehemently denies.

In a report this week, investigator Michael Fakhri claimed it began two days after Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, when Israel’s military offensive in response blocked all food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were “outrageously false.”

“A deliberate starvation policy? You can say anything — it doesn’t make it true,” he said in a press conference Wednesday.

Following intense international pressure — especially from close ally the United States — Netanyahu’s government gradually has opened several border crossings for tightly controlled deliveries. Fakhri said limited aid initially went mostly to southern and central Gaza, not to the north where Israel had ordered Palestinians to go.

A professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Fakhri was appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council as the investigator, or special rapporteur, on the right to food and assumed the role in 2020.

“By December, Palestinians in Gaza made up 80 percent of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger,” Fakhri said. “Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”

Fakhri, who teaches law courses on human rights, food law and development, made the allegations in a report to the UN General Assembly circulated Thursday.

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He claims it goes back 76 years to Israeli’s independence and its continuous dislocation of Palestinians. Since then, he accused Israel of deploying “the full range of techniques of hunger and starvation against the Palestinians, perfecting the degree of control, suffering and death that it can cause through food systems.”

Since the war in Gaza began, Fakhri said he has received direct reports of the destruction of the territory’s food system, including farmland and fishing, which also has been documented and recognized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and others.

“Israel then used humanitarian aid as a political and military weapon to harm and kill the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he claimed.

Israel insists it no longer places restrictions on the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, including food.

At Wednesday’s press conference, Netanyahu cited figures from COGAT, Israel’s military body overseeing aid entry into Gaza, that 700,000 tons of food items had been allowed into Gaza since the war began 11 months ago.

Nearly half of that food aid in recent months has been brought in by the private sector for sale in Gaza’s markets, according to COGAT figures. However, many Palestinians in Gaza say they struggle to afford enough food for their families.

Israel allows trucks of aid through two small crossings in the north and one main crossing in the south, Kerem Shalom. However, since Israel’s invasion of the southern city of Rafah in May, the UN and other aid agencies say they struggle to reach the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom to retrieve the aid for free distribution because Israel’s military operations make it too dangerous.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “beyond catastrophic,” with more than 1 million Palestinians not receiving any food rations in August and a 35 percent drop in people getting daily cooked meals.

The UN humanitarian office attributed the sharp reduction in cooked meals partly to multiple evacuation orders from Israeli security forces that forced at least 70 of 130 kitchens to either suspend or relocate their operations, he said Thursday. The UN’s humanitarian partners also lacked sufficient food supplies to meet requirements for the second straight month in central and southern Gaza, Dujarric added.

He said critical shortages of supplies in Gaza are stem from hostilities, insecurity, damaged roads, and Israeli obstacles and access limitations.

UN investigator accuses Israel of starvation campaign in Gaza

ARAB NEWS

International

Protesters rally in France against new PM appointment

Published

9 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Trends Admin

Protesters rally in France against new PM appointment

Protests are taking place across France over the nomination of right-wing Michel Barnier as the new prime minister, after an inconclusive election in which the left won the largest number of seats.

More than 100 protests are expected to take place on Saturday, with people already on the streets in cities including Bordeaux, Nice and Le Mans.

The demonstrations were called by trade unions and left-wing political parties, whose own candidate for prime minister was rejected by President Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, said he is open to forming a government with politicians across the political spectrum, including the left.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran firebrand from the radical France Unbowed party, called for the “most powerful mobilisation possible” in national marches.

Around 130 protests are being held, with the biggest setting out from central Paris this afternoon. Other cities staging protests include Marseille and Lyon.

The demonstrators are using slogans such as “denial of democracy” and “stolen election”.

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Parties on the left are angry that their own candidate for prime minister, Lucie Castets, was rejected by Mr Macron, who said she had no chance of surviving a vote of confidence in the National Assembly.

Mr Barnier may be able to survive a confidence vote because the far right, which also won a large number of seats, has said it won’t automatically vote against him.

However, that has led to criticism that his government will be dependent on the far right.

Ms Castets said she – like millions of French voters – felt betrayed and that the president had in effect ended up governing with the far right.

“We have a prime minister completely dependent on National Rally,” she added.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the protests, Mr Barnier is focussed on forming a new government.

After talks with the leaders of the right-wing Republicans and the president’s centrist Ensemble group, he said discussions were going very well and were “full of energy”.

Some on the left have blamed themselves for ending up with Mr Barnier as prime minister.

Socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo pointed out that the president had considered former Socialist prime minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, for the job but that he had been turned down by his own party.

Another Socialist Mayor, Karim Bouamrane, blamed intransigence from other parts of the left alliance: “The path they chose was 100% or nothing – and here we are with nothing.”

Protesters rally in France against new PM appointment

BBC

International

Man who attacked judge in court pleads ‘guilty but mentally ill’

Published

14 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Trends Admin

Deobra Redden

Man who attacked judge in court pleads ‘guilty but mentally ill’

Deobra Redden, the man caught on video attacking a judge during an attempted battery conviction, has pled guilty with a significant caveat—he has been declared “guilty but mentally ill.”

In a statement released on Friday, September 6, by Redden’s lawyers at CEGA Law Group, they emphasized that their client acknowledges the severity of his actions and is seeking mental health treatment as part of his sentencing. The legal team is pushing for mental health reform and hopes Redden’s case will help spotlight the need for improvements in the system.

The attorneys expressed sympathy for Judge Mary Kay Holthus, the judge who was attacked, and thanked the Clark County District Attorney’s Office for working towards a resolution.

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The shocking courtroom incident, which was caught on video, shows Redden leaping over the judge’s bench as Judge Holthus was delivering his sentence for an earlier conviction. Holthus had made a comment about Redden “getting a taste of something else” before he ran towards her. Despite the chaos, the judge only sustained minor injuries after hitting her head.

Redden was quickly restrained and appeared in court days later, wearing a facemask and hand covers, where he was sentenced to 19-48 months behind bars for the attempted battery conviction.

Redden’s sentencing for the judge attack is set for November 7. His legal team is advocating for mental health treatment to be central to his punishment.