Posted on 01/20/24
| News Source: Breitbart
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that Israel cannot defeat Hamas — that there is no “military solution,” and that Israel will have to accept a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu reportedly rejected the idea.
NBC News reported Wednesday that Blinken, and Biden, are therefore trying to work around Netanyahu — the democratically-elected leader of Israel — in a departure from the Biden administration’s posture as the supposed defender of democratic ideals:
Blinken told Netanyahu that ultimately there is no military solution to Hamas, according to the officials, and that the Israeli leader needs to recognize that or history will repeat itself and violence will continue. But, the officials said, Netanyahu was unmoved.
The officials said the Biden administration is trying to lay the groundwork with other Israeli and civil society leaders in anticipation of an eventual post-Netanyahu government. In an attempt to work around Netanyahu, Blinken also met individually 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, that Israelis believe that they are, in fact, capable of winning the war, and that they are doing so; two, that Palestinians themselves do not want a state more than they want to destroy Israel, meaning a state is doomed to fail.
On the first point, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, delivered a comprehensive summary Wednesday night of the war’s progress. While fighting in the southern portion of Gaza remains challenging, he said, the IDF had largely destroyed Hamas in the northern and central regions of the territory. The south is where Hamas’s leaders are believed to be hiding underground — surrounded by over 100 Israeli hostages, whom they are using as bargaining chips and human shields.