TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu railed Sunday against growing criticism from the United States against his leadership amid the devasting war with Hamas, saying the pressure won’t stop Israel from achieving “total victory.”
In recent days, top officials from the U.S., Israel’s staunchest ally which has provided key military and diplomatic support during the war, have publicly voiced their frustration with Netanyahu and his government. U.S. President Joe Biden accused Netanyahu of hurting Israel because of the huge civilian death toll in Gaza.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the country and a strong Israel supporter, then called on Israel to hold a new election, saying Netanyahu had “lost his way.” Biden then expressed support for what he called Schumer’s “good speech.”
The U.S. also has expressed concerns about a planned Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where about 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, and support for a new round of talks aimed at securing a cease-fire in exchange for the return of Israeli hostages.
The Israeli delegation to those talks wasn’t expected to leave for Qatar until after Sunday evening meetings of the Security Cabinet and War Cabinet, which will give them directions for the negotiations.
Despite the talks, Netanyahu made it clear Sunday he had no plans of backing down from the fighting that has already killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, in the more than five months since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel killed 1,200 people and left another 250 hostage in Gaza, Israeli authorities say.
He said that calls for an election now — which polls show he would lose badly — would force Israel to stop fighting and would paralyze the country for six months.
“If we stop the war now, before all of its goals are achieved, this means that Israel will have lost the war, and this we will not allow. Therefore, we cannot, and will not, succumb to this pressure,” he said.
While the international criticism was mainly directed at Netanyahu and his leadership specifically, his statement Sunday painted it as a broader attack on Israel.
“No international pressure will stop us from realizing all of the goals of the war: Eliminating Hamas, freeing all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel,” he said.
He reiterated his determination to attack Hamas in Rafah and said that his government approved military plans for such an operation.
“We will operate in Rafah. This will take several weeks, and it will happen,” Netanyahu said.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul-general in New York and an outspoken critic of Netanyahu, said that the Israeli leader’s comments fit in with his efforts to find someone else to blame should Israel not achieve it’s wartime goal of destroying Hamas.
“He’s looking on purpose for a conflict with the U.S. so that he can blame Biden,” Pinkas said.
Both sides have something to gain politically from the public spat. The Biden administration has come under increasing pressure from progressive Democrats and some Arab-American supporters to restrain Israel’s war against Hamas. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has used the recurrent arguments to show his base that he can withstand global pressure, even from Israel’s closest ally.
Israel’s offensive has driven most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes. A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N.
The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 31,645 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.