Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government missed an opportunity to reach a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia last year, a top aide to former US president Joe Biden said in an interview that aired Sunday.
The deal would have required a ceasefire and hostage release deal and a willingness on the part of Israel to establish a political horizon for an eventual Palestinian state — something Netanyahu has long rejected and, since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, has stated would amount to a prize for terrorism.
“I don’t understand the decision not to grab that opportunity as the most important strategic move Israel can make,” Amos Hochstein told Channel 13’s “Hamakor” investigative program. “I think it was missed before. I hope Israel doesn’t miss that opportunity moving forward — even if it means doing things that politically are uncomfortable.”
Hochstein was one of nine senior Biden administration officials interviewed for the Sunday program who took viewers through their frustrations in dealing with Netanyahu’s government throughout the Gaza war.
The former US officials shared their belief that Netanyahu’s refusal to plan for the postwar management of Gaza was a stalling tactic to avoid decisions that risked toppling his government.
They detailed brief deliberations in Washington about having Biden deliver a speech aimed at potentially spurring an election in Israel, given Netanyahu’s intransigence.
And they revealed that a video posted by Netanyahu accusing the US administration of withholding various weapons transfers for months scuttled a nearly final agreement to release the lone shipment of 2,000-lb bombs that had actually been frozen.
Biden officials fumed at Netanyahu, who they felt was being ungrateful for the support that the US had been providing.
Weeks earlier, the White House had pushed a $19 billion supplemental security assistance package for Israel through Congress.
“Hamakor” also interviewed a more junior administration official who resigned in protest of what she said was Biden’s decision to give Israel a pass despite a US law that bars the transfer of weapons to countries that block the transfer of humanitarian aid.
Despite the disagreements, the top Biden officials professed devotion to Israel’s security, explaining that this dedication was what made attacks by Netanyahu and his supporters, who accused them of abandoning Israel, particularly stinging.
“Having the prime minister of Israel question the support of the United States after all that we did — do I think that was a right and proper thing for a friend to do? I do not,” said former national security adviser Jake Sullivan. “[However], I will always stand firm behind the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself and that the United States has a responsibility to help Israel, and I’ll do that no matter who the prime minister is, no matter what they say about me or the US or the president that I work for.”
Facing pressure from progressives in his party, Biden signed a memo early last year requiring the State Department to draft a report certifying whether recipients of US weapons were using them according to international law and not blocking humanitarian aid from reaching civilians.
Stacy Gilberg, who served as a senior adviser in the State Department, was among those involved in compiling that report. Shortly before it was released on May 10, she and her colleagues were boxed out of the process and the final conclusions of the report were written by higher-level officials, Gilbert told “Hamakor.”
The report concluded that while Israel did not fully cooperate with efforts to ensure aid flowed into Gaza, Jerusalem’s actions did not amount to a breach of US law that would require a halt on US weapons.
“I had to read the report twice because I couldn’t believe what it said. It was just shocking in its mendacity. Everyone knows that is not true,” she said, explaining her decision to resign in protest shortly thereafter.
Herzog, too, made a point of summarizing Biden’s perilous term positively.
“God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted,” the former Israeli ambassador said.