Netanyahu has frequently styled himself as Israel’s indispensable warrior statesman, but it’s unlikely his statue will grace the Oval Office anytime soon. The Israeli premier has a long history of turning friendly U.S. presidents into pawns in his own political battles, and using set pieces in Washington as platforms for his own campaigns in Israel.
“One thing Netanyahu’s four speeches to Congress as premier have in common is that they were all made at the invitation of a Republican leadership on Capitol Hill and during the term of a Democratic president who had major policy differences with him,” Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer noted. “In each case, Netanyahu sought to demonstrate, with the help of his GOP allies, that his influence in America transcended the White House.”
The first time Netanyahu addressed Congress was nearly three decades ago in 1996, when he and his right-wing allies had just come to power in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzakh Rabin, whose efforts toward forging peace with the Palestinians that Netanyahu had opposed. His last address to Congress was in 2015, when he came to grandstand against the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran just weeks before Israeli elections.
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This time, Netanyahu will take to the dais in arguably the most febrile atmosphere yet: Israel is in the grips of the harrowing, hideous 10-month war in the Gaza Strip that it launched following militant group Hamas’s bloody Oct. 7 attack on the country. Much of the Palestinian territory lies in ruin, tens of thousands have been killed and Netanyahu, much to the chagrin of the Biden administration and many Israelis, has seemed unwilling to commit to any serious plans for the war’s end or its aftermath.
According to Israeli opinion polls, the majority of the Israeli public want Netanyahu to resign, with many Israelis convinced he’s not doing enough to prioritize the release of dozens of Israeli hostages still in Hamas captivity. “Prime Minister Netanyahu poses an existential threat to the State of Israel,” a group of prominent former Israeli military and intelligence agency commanders wrote in an open letter to U.S. congressional leaders Tuesday. “He has no clear strategic objectives for the war in Gaza, no plan for the day after.”
Further complicating proceedings for Netanyahu is the U.S. reaction. The unprecedented developments of the past 10 days — an assassination attempt on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and President Biden’s decision to bow out of the race — have consumed the Washington conversation and will make it hard for Netanyahu to take center stage. “There just isn’t capacity in this town to be focused on this speech the way it might have been before,” former U.S. diplomat and peace negotiator Dennis Ross said during a webinar hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
What attention Netanyahu will get may not be what he had in mind. Vice President Harris, now on the campaign trail, will not take the customary spot alongside the House speaker for Netanyahu’s speech. A host of Democrats have already announced they are not attending the event in protest of Netanyahu’s handling of the war. Harris is still slated to meet the Israeli leader in a one-on-one meeting where, according to the Wall Street Journal, she plans to press Netanyahu to end the war as well as take seriously Palestinian political aspirations and demands.
Democrats were themselves facing renewed pressure from interest and advocacy groups to get tougher on Israel. “Enough is enough,” said Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, in a statement warning of U.S. complicity in alleged war crimes in Gaza. “The U.S. government has been presented with ample evidence from experts around the world that U.S.-origin arms have been used in war crimes and unlawful killings by the Israeli government. Continued weapons transfers will make the U.S. complicit in violations of international law committed with these arms.”
Those calls were echoed by seven major labor unions Tuesday, which in a joint open letter to Biden called for a halt to U.S. military aid to Israel. “Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with U.S.-manufactured bombs,” noted the group, which included the influential Service Employees International Union and United Auto Workers. “And the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day, with famine, mass displacement, and destruction of basic infrastructure including schools and hospitals.”
They concluded, “Stopping U.S. military aid to Israel is the quickest and most sure way to do so, it is what U.S. law demands, and it will show your commitment to securing a lasting peace in the region.”
In Gaza itself, conditions remain dire. The World Health Organization warned that it had detected traces of polio in the territory’s sewage. More than a million people are sheltering in tents amid summer heat waves. Famine is believed to prevail in much of Gaza.
Relentless Israeli offensives keep driving Palestinian civilians from one blasted area to another, including a new exodus this week from the Mawasi neighborhood of the city of Khan Younis, which Israel had formerly designated a safe zone. Mass casualty incidents thanks to Israeli bombardments keep taking place. Close to 40,000 people have been killed — the majority women and children — according to local authorities, while the United Nations reported last month that some 21,000 children may be missing.
Beyond the hostility of Netanyahu and his far-right Israeli allies, Palestinians are also reckoning with their dysfunctional leadership. On Tuesday, China brokered a unity declaration in Beijing between leaders of various Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, the party at the heart of the unpopular Palestinian Authority. Gazans looked askance at the developments far away.
“Come here to Earth and look at the hospitals in which there is not a single drop of blood that can save people’s lives,” Kary Thabit, 40, who has been displaced 10 times in the war and called the factions “a joke,” told my colleagues. “Look at the people in the northern Gaza Strip who are dying of hunger,” she told The Washington Post by phone. “Look at how Israeli tanks are frolicking in the land of Gaza. These people do not represent me. They are just failed actors.”
