said at a Monday conference<\/a>\u00a0in Israel that weapons shipments are continuing, though \u201cperhaps not at the speed of Oct. 8 when things were at an extraordinary pace of response,\u201d which he added was not sustainable in the long run.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019re at a different point now in the war, in the process, but we\u2019re not in a different point in terms of U.S. support for Israel,\u201d Lew said.<\/p>\n
Although the U.S. may not be deliberately slowing down transfers, the bureaucratic delays may be beneficial as Washington seeks to prevent a potential war with Hezbollah, said Yaari of The Washington Institute.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt happens because of objective reasons, but it may also fall in line with the American desire to\u00a0convince Israel not to go for a full-scale, devastating war in Lebanon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A U.S. special envoy is in the region trying to de-escalate a wider Lebanon conflict at the same time as Israeli officials continue to publicly warn of all-out war. Netanyahu said this week that once the war in Gaza wraps up, his forces will be clear to move north to Lebanon.<\/p>\n
But the Biden-Netanyahu rift also comes amid domestic turmoil in Israel, with protesters demanding that officials accept a cease-fire deal and return the remaining hostages in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s wartime Cabinet fell apart last week after centrist opposition leader Benny Gantz quit over the direction of the war, or lack thereof. Gantz has called for elections and accused Netanyahu of continuing the war for his political survival.<\/p>\n
Russell Berman, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Middle East expert, said there are \u201cmultiple dimensions\u201d to the clash between Biden and Netanyahu, including domestic concerns in Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere probably has been some genuine slow walking of shipments, or at least a reluctance on the part of the White House to speed up a normally bureaucratic process,\u201d Berman said.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also to Netanyahu\u2019s \u201cpolitical advantage to be seen as standing up to the White House,\u201d especially amid criticism over the Oct. 7 attacks, Berman added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe liberal perspective in the United States is that Netanyahu is too strong on security,\u201d he said, \u201cand I think the criticism of him in Israel is that he\u2019s maybe not strong enough on security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has escalated his feud with President Biden over the war in Gaza, accusing him of holding back arms transfers in a highly public dispute, which… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267,257],"tags":[269],"views":137,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}