Fareed: Biden Is Right, Netanyahu Is Wrong -Fareed Zakaria
Fareed's Global Briefing (email)
Fareed: Biden Is Right, Netanyahu Is Wrong
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US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have split over the war in Gaza—and the US president is right, Fareed argues in his latest Washington Post column.
Biden has called for a viable postwar plan for the Strip, Fareed notes. “That was why the White House wanted to begin discussions with the Palestinian Authority and a group of Arab states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to make plans for reconstruction and governance in a non-Hamas Gaza. Netanyahu will not consider any such plans.”
The Israeli prime minister insists Hamas must be totally defeated. In February, he suggested Israel would maintain security control over postwar Gaza and that reconstruction would depend on demilitarization. But there are already signs that without a detailed and durable political solution, Israel will need to conduct raids in Gaza in perpetuity, Fareed writes. Notably, Israeli military officials have been saying such a plan is needed.
“Netanyahu refuses to talk about the postwar because he knows that his own postwar future is bleak,” Fareed writes. “Many Israelis continue to hold him responsible for the policies that led to the Oct. 7 attack. Were new elections to be called, he would likely lose office—and then face an ongoing prosecution as well as potential inquiries about the failures that led to Oct. 7. All of this can be pushed off as long as the prime minister insists on a Hamas surrender, which he will not get but will keep the war going indefinitely. It is a strategy not designed to secure Israel’s future but rather his own.”
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