Well, this is awkward.
President Biden spoke Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time in more than a month — and three days after praising Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s incendiary speech calling for the Jewish state to hold a “new election” and oust Netanyahu following the war against Hamas.
The White House press office said the two discussed ongoing humanitarian efforts in the Gaza Strip as well the Israeli offensive in the city of Rafah, on the southwestern edge of the Palestinian enclave near the Egyptian border.
Full readouts from both sides were expected later Monday.
Last week, Biden said in a MSNBC interview that Israeli forces entering Rafah would constitute a “red line,” before backtracking to say there was “no red line [at which] I’m going to cut off all weapons so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them.”
The next day, Netanyahu said he would order troops into Rafah, vowing: “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave.”
On Friday, Biden told reporters Schumer had delivered a “good speech” after the Brooklyn Democrat said on the Senate floor the previous day that Netanyahu and “radical” members of his security cabinet were an “obstacle” to peace.
“Senator Schumer contacted my staff, my senior staffer, that he was going to make that speech,” Biden said during an Oval Office meeting with Ireland Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
“I’m not going to elaborate on the speech,” added the president at the time. “He made a good speech, and I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans.”
Schumer’s comments drew a rebuke from Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu’s rivals, as well most Jewish American groups and congressional Republicans.
“I think what he said is totally inappropriate,” Netanyahu said of Schumer during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
“It’s inappropriate for a — to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there,” the Israeli PM added. “That’s something that Israel, the Israeli public does on its own, and we’re not a banana republic.
“I think the only government that we should be working on to bring down now is the terrorist tyranny in Gaza, the Hamas tyranny that murdered over 1,000 Israelis, including some dozens of Americans, and is holding Americans and Israelis hostage. That’s what we should be focused on.”
Netanyahu, 74, is in his third stint as Israel’s head of government, having held the premiership from 1996 through 1999, and again from 2009 until 2021.