The Biden administration considered ways to “get rid” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he wouldn’t go along with their plans for the Gaza Strip, according to an investigation by Channel 13.
“The White House got tired of Netanyahu and started to roll around a revolutionary idea ... how to get rid of Netanyahu,” claimed Raviv Drucker, who hosts the channel’s HaMakor programme.
The broadcast, titled All the President’s Men involved in-depth interviews with nine members of Biden’s team – including former US ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides, former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, former White House national security communications advisor John Kirby and former senior Biden aide Ilan Goldenberg.
According to the report, the administration became aggravated by Netanyahu’s refusal to discuss the end goal of Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza, specifically who would take charge of the Gaza Strip after Hamas had been ousted.
The Biden team proposed handing security control of the Strip to a foreign force, which would then turn it over to the Palestinian Authority (PA), Goldenberg said.
“We actually had a pretty good program of training Palestinian security forces in the West Bank ... But in the short term you needed something, probably Egyptians, Arabs ... to come in and temporarily hold it because those Palestinians wouldn’t be ready for a while,” he recalled.
However, reflecting on the administration’s assessment that Netanyahu was standing in the way, he suggested that the Israeli leader didn’t want to discuss the “day after” because it would open a “Pandora’s box” and risk collapsing his governing coalition.
Netanyahu has been under significant domestic pressure from the more right-wing elements of his government to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and to refuse PA control of Gaza.
Goldenberg, who now serves as senior vice president and chief policy officer at J Street, told the programme: “There were a lot of people who are talking about, including in the Oval Office, at times, the idea of... the president going out and giving a speech.”
This speech would, according to the former aide, have been supportive of opposition figure Benny Gantz, who was outstripping Netanyahu in the polls at the time.
“The idea would be to either force Netanyahu to come on board with [a deal], or scramble Israeli politics and see if you could trigger elections ... That's what people are saying. Let's just break this up because it's not going anywhere good.” Goldenberg added.
Indeed, Biden did start criticising Netanyahu publicly at the time. In February 2024, the then-president said Israel’s military offensive was “over the top.” The following month, he said Netanyahu is "hurting Israel more than helping Israel.”
According to HaMakor, Biden told his people: “I don’t understand how Netanyahu is holding onto power.”
In the end, though, Biden “didn’t dare turn his statements into policy,” Drucker claimed.
Goldenberg went on: “There was a real debate about that. I think at the end of the day he was uncomfortable with the idea of going out that directly against Netanyahu.”
