Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that Israel cannot defeat Hamas, meaning there is no “military solution” and that Israel must accept a Palestinian state.
Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly rejected the idea.
NBC News report Blinken and Biden are therefore seeking to circumvent Netanyahu, Israel's democratically elected leader, in a departure from the Biden administration's stance as a defender of democratic ideals, Blinken said Wednesday.
Blinken told Netanyahu there is ultimately no military solution to Hamas and Israeli leaders need to realize that, or history will repeat itself and the violence will continue, officials said. He said he was deaf. But officials said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained unmoved.
Officials said the Biden administration is seeking to lay the groundwork with other Israeli and civil society leaders in anticipation of an eventual successor to Netanyahu. In an attempt to sidestep Netanyahu, Blinken also met separately with members of his war cabinet and other Israeli leaders, including opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid, officials said.
But Blinken faces two obstacles. One is that the Israelis actually believe they can win the war, and they do. The second is that the Palestinians themselves want a state no more than the destruction of Israel, which means that the state is doomed to collapse.
Regarding the first point, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Major General Daniel Hagari issued a comprehensive statement. summary Wednesday night as the war progressed. Although fighting in southern Gaza remains difficult, he said the IDF has largely destroyed Hamas in the northern and central Gaza Strip. The south is where Hamas leaders are believed to be hiding underground, surrounded by more than 100 Israeli hostages, using them as bargaining chips and human shields.
The Israeli public is almost unanimously determined to destroy Hamas, a dramatic change since the October 7th terrorist attack in which Israelis were prepared to ignore Hamas unless it attacked them. This is a change in attitude. The massacre of 1,200 people and the abduction of 253 more (mostly civilians) changed Israeli attitudes across the political spectrum.
Many left-wing Israelis, who once considered themselves “more Palestinian than Palestinians,” now see all Palestinians as a potential threat.
according to gallupConsidering what Hamas has done to Israel and Gaza, and the pro-terrorism sympathies of the corrupt Palestinian Authority that governs the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, nearly two-thirds of Israelis now are opposed to a Palestinian state.
This is a radical reversal from the position of just 10 years ago, when a majority of Israelis were “twice as likely to support an independent Palestinian state (61%) as they supported an independent state for Israel (61%).” Hamas rocket attacks and terrorist attacks are causing the change.
Mr. Blinken and President Joe Biden are committed to an old and failed Middle East peace model that requires the Palestinian issue to take precedence over other issues. President Donald Trump rejected the idea, and the result was the historic Abraham Accords.
Now, Biden and Blinken are trying to reach new peace deals, including one between Saudi Arabia and Israel that is conditional on the establishment of a Palestinian state.And Blinken casting In contrast to the Arab world, Israelis seem as if they are not ready for peace.
According to opinion polls, this is a complete reversal of the facts. majority of Palestinians supported the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack. While the Abraham Accords remain intact so far, so too does Arab public opinion.
NBC News also reported that Blinken is pushing for a deal in which Saudi Arabia would agree to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state. Ironically, before October 7, Saudi Arabia was on the verge of reaching an agreement without a Palestinian state.
According to one report, it was the Biden administration that actually stalled the deal, demanding additional concessions from the Palestinians – concessions that Saudi Arabia did not seek, and that the Palestinians would not agree to any compromise. This is a concession that was not made.
Joel B. Pollack is a senior editor at Breitbart News. Breitbart News Sunday Sunday nights from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 7:00 PM PT) on Sirius XM Patriot. He published his 2021 e-book “The Zionist conspiracy (and how to join it)' has been updated and a new preface has been added. He is also the author of a recently published e-book. Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 US Presidential Election. He is the recipient of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter @joelpolak.
