Bibi Is Choosing Stefanik and Trump. President Biden, Don't Be Fooled.

By Thomas L. Friedman

'If you are keeping score at home, you have surely noticed that the two most important defense officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former military chief of staff Benny Gantz — warned last week that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a disastrous abyss by refusing to present any plan for non-Hamas Palestinians to govern Gaza and appears to be contemplating a long-term Israeli military occupation of Gaza instead. Gantz said he would leave the government if there was no plan by June 8.

Here are the stakes for America in what these ministers are saying: Netanyahu has become a radical actor, undermining key U.S. interests and Arab allies, and becoming the gift that keeps on giving for Iran.

Just look at the policy choices Netanyahu has made and tell me with a straight face that he has not let Israel be completely outmaneuvered by Iran. . .

But now Netanyahu is busy doing something even more dangerous for Israel’s future — and for America. He is relentlessly pounding into the Israeli public’s mind-set that there is no difference between the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Hamas, which is dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the map and replacing it with an Islamic one, and the secular, Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which embraced the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s calling for a two-state solution and collaborated with Israel for three decades to limit violence in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority has a million flaws, some created or exacerbated by violent Israeli settlers. But there is a reason Netanyahu panicked every time its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, would say, in effect: “OK, Bibi, you want to control the West Bank all by yourself? Here are the keys.” . .

And yet, because Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners want to annex Gaza — and their votes can keep him in office and out of jail if he is convicted in his corruption trials — Bibi is singing their line that Hamas and Fatah are the same.

(This is the most important dynamic going on now, and the decision by the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant and the leaders of Hamas on charges of war crimes only strengthens Bibi at home and deflects attention from this.)'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/opinion/netanyahu-gaza-war.html