Benyamin Netanyahu again freezes Joe Biden by opening a new clash with the USA over the war in Gaza. In fact, if the American president had defined the creation of a Palestinian state with Netanyahu in government as “not impossible” after the telephone conversation on Friday – the first after 27 days of tense silence between the two -, the Israeli prime minister was evidently irritated by the leaked indiscretions he replied that there could never be Palestinian sovereignty of Abu Mazen’s PNA in the Strip, because it would clash with the security needs of the Jewish State. “Israel – Netanyahu’s office clarified – must maintain full control of the security of the Strip to ensure that Gaza no longer represents a threat, and this is in conflict with the Palestinian request for sovereignty”.
While a raid attributed to Israel killed 5 Iranian Pasdaran in Damascus – including the intelligence chief of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria and his deputy -, Netanyahu stated that his position has been “consistent” for years and also reiterated in the press conference held the day before the conversation with Biden. However, the prime minister appears increasingly isolated on the international scene and beyond. Protests against his government are also spreading within the country.
In the evening, thousands of people marched in Tel Aviv demanding the dissolution of the Knesset and Netanyahu’s resignation. On Friday evening a similar demonstration took place in Caesarea, near the prime minister’s house, with the families of the hostages making the same demands. And the turmoil in the Likud is only increasing.
On the international front, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres branded as “unacceptable the rejection of the two-state solution and the denial of the right to a state for the Palestinian people”. “This – noted the UN chief – would indefinitely prolong the conflict, which has become a serious threat to global peace and security, exacerbate polarization and encourage extremists everywhere”. The same tone was expressed by EU High Representative Josep Borrell, who actually went further by accusing the Netanyahu government of having “funded Hamas in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority”. Returning to the United States, the disappointment with the right-wing Israeli government, not only in the White House, is evident: 60 democratic deputies have asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to reset relations with the Jerusalem government, deaf to any request of the US administration. “Netanyahu – noted Thomas Friedman, one of the major analysts of the New York Times – is turning against Joe Biden, who this year seems set to run twice: once in America against Donald Trump and once in Israel against Netanyahu”.
An attack on Biden’s words and the 2-state solution also came from Hamas, which agreed with Netanyahu in this although for diametrically opposed reasons: “Selling the illusion that Biden is trying to talk about the Palestinian state does not deceive the our people – warned the representative of the Islamic faction Hamas Izzat al-Richiq -. Biden is a full partner in the war of genocide and our people do not expect anything good from him”. Hamas has therefore exploited the hostage issue, which is splitting the Jewish state. “In the end – boasted Musa Abu Marzuk, a member of the faction’s political bureau – Israel will be forced to reach an agreement, because in more than 100 days of war it has not managed to recover any prisoners by force. So either it will bring them back through an agreement with the movement or he will get them back corpses”.
On the 106th day of the war, however, Israel continued to pound the Strip, where it destroyed ready-made material for around 800 rockets. While Tehran promised revenge for the raid on Damascus: “The Islamic Republic will not leave the crimes of the Zionist regime unanswered,” warned Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
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