Conjectures about his fall
Netanyahu fumes over US intelligence report
March 12, 2024, 10:23 p.m
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The USA is Israel’s most important ally. But US President Biden is increasingly criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over the number of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip. Now US secret services are predicting that Netanyahu will be forced to resign – and he is in a bind.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deeply upset by a US intelligence report that suggests his impending overthrow, according to a media report. The head of government was foaming with anger, the news channel Channel 12 reported in the evening. In their report published the day before, the American secret services expressed the expectation that the Israeli population had lost confidence in Netanyahu’s leadership qualities and would stage mass protests demanding his resignation and new elections.
Netanyahu will therefore seek “a strong, public and dramatic confrontation” with US President Joe Biden, Channel 12 said, citing unnamed senior officials. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office sent a strong statement from a top government representative, who was also not named, to the Israeli media. “Israel is not a protectorate of the United States, but an independent and democratic country whose citizens are the ones who elect the government,” it said. “We expect our friends to bring down the terrorist regime of Hamas and not the elected government in Israel.”
The U.S. intelligence community’s report, titled “Annual Threat Assessment,” noted the decline in Netanyahu’s approval ratings among the Israeli public. This started before the war that Israel was waging against the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to govern has deepened and spread among the public (…), and we expect mass protests demanding his resignation and new elections. Another, more moderate government is a possibility,” the report states.
The USA is Israel’s most important ally. They support the Jewish state with large quantities of weapons and ammunition. Ahead of the presidential election in November, Biden is under pressure from Arab voters and younger voters who are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinians. Biden had recently criticized Netanyahu more and more openly because of the immense number of civilian victims in the Gaza Strip and because of the prevention of sufficient humanitarian aid for the suffering civilian population. The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented massacre carried out by Hamas and other extremist groups in southern Israel on October 7th.