Biden turns on Bibi after months of pressure: A 30-year friendship critical to Israel’s diplomatic and military links to the U.S. hits boiling point as Joe rejects Netanyahu’s Gaza plan and condemns his governments lurch to the right

Days after the Hamas attack on Israel, Joe Biden flew to Tel Aviv, where he hugged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a public show of support.

For weeks afterward, he spoke of their decades of friendship, even as Western allies began to express doubts about the bombs that hit the Gaza Strip in a wave of destruction.

That all changed on Tuesday when Biden publicly criticized Israel for the first time, hinting that criticism from the left of his own party and international warnings of a looming humanitarian catastrophe had caught up with him.

He made a public statement that Netanyahu and his hardline government must change course if they want to maintain international support for their attack on the terrorist group that has killed at least 1,200 Israelis.

“They’re starting to lose that support because of the indiscriminate bombing that’s going on,” he told the assembled donors.

This message caused shock in Israel.

“There is a tremendous amount of anger,” said Aryeh Lightstone, who was the top adviser to Trump’s ambassador to Israel. He called the words “deeply inappropriate.”

But to White House Kremlin officials, who have been scouring recent statements for signs of a change in direction by the administration, it may have been less surprising.

Vice President Kamala Harris made her strongest demand yet for Israel to comply with international humanitarian law in a speech 10 days ago in Dubai.

“Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she said. “Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming out of Gaza are simply devastating.”

That same day, Biden’s defense secretary warned that Israel’s campaign could backfire by radicalizing a new generation of Hamas recruits.

“In this type of combat, the center of gravity is the civilian population,” Lloyd Austin said. “And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you will replace tactical victory with strategic defeat.”

This approach seemed to run counter to the classic good cop/bad cop school of international diplomacy. Biden’s surrogates were tasked with issuing warnings while the president continued to offer warm words of encouragement.

The approach came as no surprise to those who knew Biden well or saw him at work as Barack Obama’s vice president.

In fact, Biden has repeatedly touted his success in using a friendly approach and long-term personal relationships to influence Netanyahu. (He said Monday that they have been friends for 51 years.)

For example, he said privately that when he was vice president during Israel’s 2014 attack on the Gaza Strip, he advised his then-boss that the best way to deal with the Israelis was to give them a big hug rather than publicly criticize them.

“If these were the Obama years, we would be much more critical publicly than we are now,” a senior administration official said. NBC News recent.

– And it won’t work. We wouldn’t have any influence.”

When asked about this approach, officials said that it had paid off.

They pointed to the administration’s success in delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and freeing hostages, forcing Israel to agree to a pause in fighting despite concerns it would allow Hamas to rearm.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters last month: “The approach we are taking with Israel and, frankly, with our partners in the region is working.

“This is about delivering help to people who need it. There is a pause in the fighting. This is the release of hostages. This is driving Americans out of the country.”

This approach angered some quarters of the administration.

Hundreds of federal employees signed an open letter demanding the Biden administration pursue a ceasefire, and dozens of State Department diplomats sent official cables of dissent.

This was not enough to change the policies of the president, who for many years maintained warm ties with Israeli politicians.

His relationship with Netanyahu began in the early 1980s, when Biden was a young senator and the future Israeli prime minister was stationed at the country’s embassy in Washington.

Both remained close to the center of power. And their families posed together during a visit in 2011, when Biden was vice president and Netanyahu was prime minister.

But their relationship has been strained under Obama, who has sought to lift Iran out of diplomatic isolation.

At the same time, administration officials openly criticized Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, which was seen as undermining any chance of an eventual two-state solution.

One official made his hostility toward the Israeli prime minister clear, calling him “chicks***” in comments published in The Atlantic.

But even then, Biden made it clear that he warmed to Netanyahu.

“We’re still friends,” Biden said at the time, using the prime minister’s nickname. “He’s been my friend for over 30 years, I said, ‘Bibi, I don’t agree with you a damn thing, but I love you.’

He used the same words at a donor meeting on Tuesday after criticizing Netanyahu’s government for veering to the right. He claimed to have written these words on a photograph he once gave to the Israeli Prime Minister.

“It’s about the same today,” he said.

Be it a principled stand based on the rising death toll in the Gaza Strip, or a simple reminder to Israel that it needs to keep international opinion on its side, or short-term political considerations as its poll numbers hurt young people. With voters more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, Biden clearly believes a little space would be good for the relationship.