How Joe Biden Confronts Benjamin Netanyahu with His Paradoxes

Both head of state and subject of a never-ending campaign to escape legal proceedings, the Israeli prime minister must decide how to position himself as he is faced with the cease-fire plan presented by Joe Biden

For years, Israel has been led by a man who is a sitting prime minister but acts like a politician who is constantly campaigning. Benjamin Netanyahu has not shied away from any alliance, whether with the ultra-Orthodox or the nationalist right, to remain in power and maintain immunity while being pursued by the courts for corruption. Today, his governance is all the more contested as many Israelis hold him responsible for the security failure of Oct. 7. If the prime minister has been wavering for months on the concessions that his country is willing to make to end the war, it is not only because of the complexity of the negotiations with Hamas or because of military objectives. It is also because he seeks to push back the timing of elections which could be unfavorable to him.

But on Friday, Netanyahu was backed into a corner by the only man capable of putting an end to the Israeli offensive: Joe Biden. The American president proposed for the first time a three-step road map, which received a positive response from Hamas. Inspired by the Israeli plan, Biden insisted on Friday, the strategy envisions an extendable six-week cease-fire, during which the 84 living Israeli captives, both civilians and military, would be gradually released in exchange for the return of displaced Gazans, followed by the total withdrawal of the Israeli army and the release of Palestinian prisoners. This would then be followed by the restitution of the remains of the 37 Israelis who died in captivity, before reconstruction of the Gaza Strip begins.

A Coalition on the Verge of Implosion

What will Netanyahu do as the stakes mount? The offensive in Gaza failed to free the hostages, capture the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, or destroy Hamas, as hoped. Lebanon’s northern front threatens to erupt into violence. Israel’s international reputation is in free fall. And the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, on which the White House has worked for years, is now in danger, as the Americans have insistently reminded us in recent weeks. Finally, a refusal would cause further deterioration of his relationship with Biden, who is already facing pressure in the form of accusations that is not acting by his own camp and attacks by fierce defenders of Israel just five months before the Nov. 5 election.

At the same time, the coalition painstakingly formed by Netanyahu threatens to implode: Two far-right ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, threatened to leave the government if Netanyahu proceeds with the American proposal. Will the Israeli prime minister, who could be tempted to dissolve parliament himself to save the initiative, choose to act as head of state or as a politician? The lives of thousands of civilians in Gaza depend on this question, which troubles his compatriots.