After President Biden warned Israel that a major attack on Rafah would cross a “red line” of US support, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is not vassal state” of the US, Axios reports.
Netanyahu declared, according to three people with knowledge of his remarks, including one of his aides:
“We are not a vassal state of the United States!”
Netanyahu’s heated response last Thursday reflected his belligerent attitude at a time when Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has strained its relations with the US.
Tensions began escalating a fortnight ago after Biden seized 3,500 US bombs that were on a ship bound for Israel. Biden, targeting his campaign, is under growing pressure from progressive Democrats to end the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.
Biden’s surprise move
Netanyahu and his closest confidant Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister, both came away surprised by Biden’s decision to supply arms and his public ultimatum, two Israeli sources familiar with the matter told Axios.
Biden and other senior US officials privately told Netanyahu and Dermer several times recently that such a move could happen if they continued to push for an invasion of Rafah, a senior US official said. But Dermer, who was Israel’s ambassador to Washington for eight years under the Obama and Trump administrations, told Netanyahu that Biden would not dare make such a move, an Israeli source said.
During his fervent speeches about a “vassal state” at the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu compared his clash with Biden over Rafah to Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, who declared independence in 1948 over the objections of then US Secretary of State George Marshall, two sources familiar with the meeting said.
Netanyahu also noted his speech to Congress in March 2015, when he expressed his opposition to President Obama’s efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran.
That speech caused a deep rift in US-Israeli relations and infuriated many Democrats.
Netanyahu’s remark about a “vassal state” echoed comments made by then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a 1982 meeting with Sam Lewis, the US ambassador to Israel. At the time, Begin was furious over President Reagan’s decision to freeze $300 million in US military aid to Israel over the Israeli government’s annexation of the Golan Heights.
