Biden officials vent frustrations in dealing with Netanyahu, decry missed chance of Saudi deal

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government missed an opportunity to reach a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia last year, a top aide to former US president Joe Biden said in an interview that aired Sunday.

The deal would have required a ceasefire and hostage release deal and a willingness on the part of Israel to establish a political horizon for an eventual Palestinian state — something Netanyahu has long rejected and, since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, has stated would amount to a prize for terrorism.

For their part, Biden officials repeatedly argued that progress toward Palestinian self-determination need not be considered an Israeli concession, as the US and its Arab allies were looking to advance the goal in a way that would isolate Hamas in favor of a reformed Palestinian Authority.

“I don’t understand the decision not to grab that opportunity as the most important strategic move Israel can make,” Amos Hochstein told Channel 13’s “Hamakor” investigative program.

“I think it was missed before. I hope Israel doesn’t miss that opportunity moving forward — even if it means doing things that politically are uncomfortable.”

Hochstein was one of nine senior Biden administration officials interviewed for the Sunday program who took viewers through their frustrations in dealing with Netanyahu’s government throughout the Gaza war.

The former US officials shared their belief that Netanyahu’s refusal to plan for the postwar management of Gaza was a stalling tactic to avoid decisions that risked toppling his government.

They detailed brief deliberations in Washington about having Biden deliver a speech aimed at potentially spurring an election in Israel, given Netanyahu’s intransigence.

And they revealed that a video posted by Netanyahu accusing the US administration of withholding various weapons transfers for months scuttled a nearly final agreement to release the lone shipment of 2,000-lb bombs that had actually been frozen.

“Hamakor” also interviewed a more junior administration official who resigned in protest of what she said was Biden’s decision to give Israel a pass despite a US law that bars the transfer of weapons to countries that block the transfer of humanitarian aid.

Despite the disagreements, the top Biden officials professed devotion to Israel’s security, explaining that this dedication was what made attacks by Netanyahu and his supporters, who accused them of abandoning Israel, particularly stinging.

“Having the prime minister of Israel question the support of the United States after all that we did — do I think that was a right and proper thing for a friend to do? I do not,” said former national security adviser Jake Sullivan. “[However], I will always stand firm behind the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself and that the United States has a responsibility to help Israel, and I’ll do that no matter who the prime minister is, no matter what they say about me or the US or the president that I work for.”

Burying the hatchet

Relations between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government were not at a particularly high point before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught on Israel, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and seized 251 as hostages.

Weeks before the onslaught, Biden had finally agreed to meet Netanyahu after holding out for nine months due to disapproval of the premier’s controversial plan to radically overhaul the Israeli judiciary.

Nonetheless, the US president gave an impassioned speech in support of Israel and warned Iran and its proxies not to join the fight against the Jewish state. Biden also ordered US aircraft carriers into the Eastern Mediterranean in a further demonstration of deterrence.

“I was asked to send a message to Hezbollah: ‘Whatever just happened, do not enter this conflict. If you do, the rules of the game change, and if you mess with this, you’ll be messing with us — the United States,'” Hochstein recalled.

Biden decided to make a solidarity visit to Israel even before his aides came up with the idea, Sullivan told “Hamakor.”

Before the president got off the plane in Tel Aviv, though, the US secured an Israeli commitment to start allowing in humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt, after top officials in Jerusalem initially pledged not to allow in one drop.

“The weight of October 7 had a physical manifestation on all of the leaders of Israel,” Sullivan recalled from that visit. “They looked different.”

Former National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said one of the Israeli ministers — whom Channel 13 revealed was Ron Dermer — told Biden during a meeting of the war cabinet that his wife had whispered into his ear where she planned to hide their daughter if Hamas terrorists entered their home.

‘Killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying’

Already in those early days, the US tried to guide a shocked Israel in its response to Hamas.

Biden “did raise his concerns that a ground operation in Gaza that was disconnected from any kind of strategic endpoint [and] could end up creating huge problems for Israel,” Sullivan said.

Ilan Goldenberg, a senior national security aide for the administration, said the US envisioned a military campaign that was similar to the one it led against ISIS, where territory was captured and then handed over to the Kurds. The US held talks with Arab allies who expressed willingness to temporarily manage security in Gaza, but they all conditioned this assistance on being able to pass the baton to the PA — a nonstarter for Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners.

While then-war cabinet ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot backed the US plan, they were overruled by the premier, Goldenberg said.

The former senior Biden official recalled how Dermer talked about a 50-year project that started with “de-radicalizing” Gazans.

“I read it as he wasn’t really interested in doing anything, [and that] it was all kind of stalling to not have that real discussion,” Goldenberg said.

אני לא כותבת את זה הרבה, אבל את הסרט שנשדר הערב אסור לפספס. אנשי ממשל ביידן, הבכירים ביותר, מתייצבים מול המצלמות ומדברים בפתיחות על מה שקרה אחרי 7 באוקטובר. נורמליזציה עם סעודיה, נתניהו, משלוחי הנשק, עסקת חטופים. זה לא היה פשוט לגרום להם לדבר, אבל בסוף זה קרה. בואו @RavivDrucker pic.twitter.com/dktPIsu01W

— Neria Kraus (@NeriaKraus) April 27, 2025

The following months saw the IDF repeatedly return to places in Gaza that it had previously cleared of Hamas operatives, who managed to return because Israel wasn’t advancing a viable alternative to fill the vacuum.

Far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have called for Israel to permanently reoccupy the Strip and rebuild settlements there. While Netanyahu has publicly ruled out the idea, he has also held off on advancing alternative initiatives that would shut off such possibilities. Ben Gvir and Smotrich have threatened to collapse the government if Israel ends the war or allows the PA to play a role in Gaza.

Former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Herzog acknowledged that “political considerations” were clouding the decision-making process. He told “Hamakor” that Israeli officials held in-depth discussions regarding the so-called day-after in Gaza. But they repeatedly ended with no decisions being made.

“If they’re never going to do this, it doesn’t matter what the outcome is, Hamas is still going to control Gaza,” Goldenberg lamented. “You’re just killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying. But you’re not building an alternative.”

Amid the intransigence, Goldenberg said there were discussions held in Washington about having Biden give a speech that would force a reckoning in Israel about how to move forward.

The idea of the speech was for Biden to present Israelis with two paths — one that saw the government aim for a hostage deal that ends the war followed by a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, and one that continued the current trajectory of endless war and increasing international isolation — and ask the public to decide which they prefer.

אנשי ביידן עונים לראשונה לנתניהו ומספרים מה באמת קרה מאחורי הקלעים | "המקור", כל אנשי הנשיא – ראשון, ברשת 13@RavivDrucker @NeriaKraus pic.twitter.com/ZTCymi2fir

— המקור (@HaMakorTV) April 25, 2025

The Times of Israel first revealed this ultimately shelved plan last year.

The goal was to “scramble Israeli politics and see if you can trigger elections,” Goldenberg said.

“There was a real debate about that, but at the end of the day [Biden] was uncomfortable with the idea of going out that directly against Netanyahu,” he said.

Pulling a fast one

Instead, a different primetime speech was given by Biden on May 31, 2024.

Four days earlier, Netanyahu had agreed to a phased framework for a hostage deal that Washington believed was enough to get Hamas on board.

Fearing that the Israeli premier might walk away from the initiative, Biden used the address to disclose the ceasefire plan that Jerusalem had accepted and call on Hamas to do the same.

“President Biden wanted to indicate that this was available and, critically, that Israel was open to doing it. This was not about trying to jam anybody. It was about creating a sense that there was a deal to be done and that deal had a certain shape to it,” Sullivan said.

Herzog said Israel was only notified about the speech moments before it was given, due to Washington’s fears that Jerusalem might try and sabotage the initiative.

“I think they were a little uncomfortable with it because we didn’t give them a heads up,” Goldenberg said.

מה באמת קרה בליל המתקפה האיראנית? אנשי המפתח מדברים לראשונה | לצפייה בתחקיר המלא: https://t.co/Fw85F7tmaL @RavivDrucker @NeriaKraus pic.twitter.com/Dc4CIcHMM7

— המקור (@HaMakorTV) April 22, 2025

A freeze or not a freeze?

By this point, the goodwill that Biden had built up with the Israeli government and people with his support following the Hamas attack had begun to dissipate.

The death toll in Gaza had crossed 30,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and Biden announced in early May that he was withholding a US shipment of 2,000-lb bombs for Israel due to concerns that they might be used in densely populated areas.

In mid-June, though, Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Pentagon were on the verge of an agreement that would have allowed the shipment to move forward, with Israel providing assurances that the high-payload bombs wouldn’t be used in Gaza, Dan Shapiro, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East at the time, told “Hamakor.”

Just before the deal was finalized, Netanyahu released a video accusing the US of not just withholding the single shipment of 2,000-lb bombs but of a much broader weapons freeze — something that the Biden administration adamantly denied.

The brewing agreement to release the 2,000-lb bombs subsequently fell apart.

Biden officials fumed at Netanyahu, who they felt was being ungrateful for the support that the US had been providing.

Weeks earlier, the White House had pushed a $19 billion supplemental security assistance package for Israel through Congress.

“Yes, we had a disagreement over one shipment, [but] to go out and attack us that way was particularly infuriating,” Goldenberg said.

“We missed an opportunity to solve a problem — one that we very much wanted to solve,” Shapiro said.

Hamakor reported that then-defense minister Yoav Gallant remains convinced that Netanyahu released the video in order to prevent him from getting credit for resolving the issue.

Aid ebbing and flowing

A related issue over which the US and Israel regularly sparred was the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which periodically dipped throughout the war.

Former US ambassador to Israel Jack Lew recalled how one of his first conversations with Gallant upon entering the post was about urging him to act against far-right Israelis blocking and looting aid trucks en route to Gaza. Ben Gvir was facing allegations that he was instructing police not to act against the perpetrators.

“‘Tomorrow we are going to be the only country in the world defending Israel. You need to give us something to work with,'” Lew described having told Gallant, who assured him that he would take care of the issue.

 

“If you had told me that we would have been as deeply involved in the logistics as we were, I would have never believed it,” Lew said, adding that even Biden had familiarity with various specific details regarding the delivery of aid that is completely uncharacteristic for a president to have.

Facing pressure from progressives in his party, Biden signed a memo early last year requiring the State Department to draft a report certifying whether recipients of US weapons were using them according to international law and not blocking humanitarian aid from reaching civilians.

Stacy Gilberg, who served as a senior adviser in the State Department, was among those involved in compiling that report. Shortly before it was released on May 10, she and her colleagues were boxed out of the process and the final conclusions of the report were written by higher-level officials, Gilbert told “Hamakor.”

The report concluded that while Israel did not fully cooperate with efforts to ensure aid flowed into Gaza, Jerusalem’s actions did not amount to a breach of US law that would require a halt on US weapons.

“I had to read the report twice because I couldn’t believe what it said. It was just shocking in its mendacity. Everyone knows that is not true,” she said, explaining her decision to resign in protest shortly thereafter.

No room to navigate on Saudi normalization

Even as the war dragged on, the Biden administration continued discussions with Saudi Arabia about a normalization agreement with Israel.

Normalization was to be coupled with a series of bilateral US-Saudi defense and economic agreements that the sides had all but finalized when Sullivan traveled to Jeddah in July.

But the Palestinian component of the normalization deal proved to be too much for Israel to accept.

“We always understood that the Israeli government depended on far-right ministers who would try to block that [Israeli] commitment [to allow a pathway to a Palestinian state], and so that might require an election or a coalition shuffle or the reliance on opposition parties who might be more open to that,” Shapiro said.

“The fact that there wasn’t a way in the Israeli political system for anyone to navigate a space to allow for that is kind of shocking,” Lew added.

For his part, Herzog maintained that there was an 11th-hour window to secure a normalization deal between the Democrats’ November 2024 election loss and Donald Trump’s January 2025 reentry into the Oval Office.

“It was my understanding that Trump preferred for the deal to wait until he got into office so that he’d be the one to do it, rather than splitting [the credit] with Biden,” the former Israeli envoy maintained.

Wearing their dog tags

Another condition for a normalization agreement was a hostage release and ceasefire deal, which the Biden administration worked to finalize up to the final hours of its term.

“Nothing was more important to the president than those [hostages’] families and making sure that they felt informed,” Kirby said.

Biden’s hostage envoy Roger Carstens was tasked with liaising with the American hostages’ families and was in constant contact with them throughout the war. He wears the dog tags of American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander around his neck.

“I’m looking forward to when Edan comes home — I’m looking forward to giving his dog tags back,” said a choked-up Carstens in the program.

The former hostage envoy recalled how families would ask him whether it was okay for them to criticize the US government in the media. He told “Hamakor” that he encouraged them to speak out and to even blame him personally.

It was a stark contrast from Netanyahu, who has criticized Israelis protesting for a hostage deal, claiming they have led Hamas to raise its demands in negotiations.

Still, this was one issue on which the Biden administration largely avoided criticizing Israel, fearing the perception of daylight between the two countries would lead Hamas to harden its stances.

Indeed, the Biden administration repeatedly singled out Hamas as the main obstacle in the hostage talks and never singled out Israel.

But now out of office, and with the May 2024 framework partially implemented, the Biden officials acknowledged that there were times when Netanyahu played the role of spoiler in negotiations.

They pointed to the premier’s decision in August 2024 to launch a public campaign regarding the importance of Israel remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor border stretch between Egypt and Gaza, which Washington felt was disingenuous and designed to tank the negotiations at a critical point.

“It became clear pretty quickly that minister Gallant did not really see that as a military necessity, and he would have been willing to withdraw the IDF from the Philadelphi Corridor as part of a hostage deal that would release all hostages, so we took seriously what our main counterpart in the Israeli system said,” Shapiro said.

ג׳ייק סאליבן היה היועץ לביטחון לאומי בבית הלבן של ביידן. הממשל האשים פומבית כל העת את חמאס בכך שמנע עסקת חטופים – מאחורי הקלעים דיברו על ניסיונות הסיכול של נתניהו. שימו לב מה הוא אומר לנו על עסקת חטופים. מילות דיפלומט אמריקני סופר בכיר, שאומרות כמעט הכל. הערב במקור @RavivDrucker pic.twitter.com/WV4CTT6NZs

— Neria Kraus (@NeriaKraus) April 27, 2025

“We were very close to having an agreement with Egypt on something that’s almost identical to what was in the final phase two agreement and that was achievable at that moment. I think there were domestic political reasons [for Netanyahu] to be seen as taking a very hard line on the Philadelphi Corridor,” Lew said.

“Hamas, for months, was not prepared to actually seriously talk about the hostages. Does that mean there weren’t moments where the prime minister was adding additional conditions or indicating some reluctance to move forward? I’m not saying that,” Sullivan noted.

Goldenberg was more definitive, even though he acknowledged being in the minority. “I would get a lot of whispers from old Israeli friends [who said] all the security people are coming out and saying [Netanyahu’s] undercutting it every step of the way. I start to believe [it] when there’s so much coming out [saying] that he’s clearly a problem. Whereas some of my colleagues didn’t quite see it.”

Hochstein, who is close friends with the parents of slain American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, reflected on being unable to secure a deal before Hersh was executed in August of last year along with five other hostages.

The former Biden envoy said negotiators had discussed adding Hersh’s name to the list of hostages to be released during the first phase of the deal on the same day he was killed.

“I know that a lot of people say, ‘In retrospect, maybe it’s good that there was no deal reached in the summer because look at all the [Israeli military] gains that were made in August and September and October. But there’s no doubt that people forget that there was a big advantage of reaching a deal earlier, and that is that those hostages would be alive, and some of the hostages who did come home would be in better condition,” Hochstein maintained.

״חשבתי שהאינטרס של ישראל תמיד היה צריך להיות להשיג עסקה בהקדם האפשרי״: בכירי ממשל ביידן מספרים לראשונה מה באמת קרה בחדרים הסגורים | לצפייה בתחקיר המלא: https://t.co/btFwWnHINr @RavivDrucker @NeriaKraus pic.twitter.com/P9P3EvgTWV

— המקור (@HaMakorTV) April 27, 2025

‘God did Israel a favor’

While Biden and Netanyahu had their share of disagreements, the two spent much of this last chapter of their public relationship trying to present it as a decades-old friendship.

“‘Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love you,” Biden would often joke at public events.

Privately, though, Biden described Netanyahu differently.

“Because it’s Netanyahu. He’s a survivor, a manipulator, a magician when it comes to relationships. Biden saw all of that,” said former US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides. “President Biden likes to use colorful language and occasionally [Netanyahu] was able to extract that language from the president.”

Biden identified as a Zionist, so when his commitment to Israel was questioned, “that really pisses you off. That aggravates Biden in a way where you don’t want to be around him when that happens,” Nides added.

“Hamakor” reported that during one of their conversations during the war, Biden hung up on Netanyahu in the middle of a conversation. During another, he told the prime minister that he was “full of shit.” Netanyahu was offended, but didn’t react.

“Each side was convinced that the other was trying to undermine him,” Herzog said.

Despite his animosity toward Netanyahu, Biden stood by Israel through the end of his term.

“This was the most significant political peril of Joe Biden’s political career. The easiest thing for Joe Biden… to do if he was worried about the votes in Michigan, is to basically get a little soft. He refused to do it,” Nides said.

“There was an enormous pressure on [Biden] inside the White House to change his position. So, when I hear comments about [how] he wasn’t good enough, or he didn’t have Israel’s back, am I disgusted by it? 100%. Is it true? 100% no.”

ג'ייק סאליבן, היועץ לביטחון לאומי בממשל ביידן: "העובדה שראש ממשלת ישראל מטיל ספק בתמיכת ארה"ב אחרי כל מה שעשינו – האם אני חושב שזה מעשה נכון וראוי של חבר? אני חושב שלא." | לצפייה בתחקיר "כל אנשי הנשיא": https://t.co/btFwWnHINr @RavivDrucker @NeriaKraus pic.twitter.com/2p5wdUsCX7

— המקור (@HaMakorTV) April 28, 2025

“Can you imagine the [backlash] if it was Amos meeting with Hamas and negotiating with Hamas. Do you understand the level of anger that would come out of this?” said the former US ambassador, referring to the unprecedented direct talks that Trump’s hostage envoy Adam Boehler held with Hamas officials last month. Israel fumed over the negotiations but has avoided criticizing them publicly.

Herzog, too, made a point of summarizing Biden’s perilous term positively.

“God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted,” the former Israeli ambassador said.

“Hamakor” anchor Raviv Drucker mused on whether that was the Biden administration’s flaw — that it was too loyal and pro-Israel to ever fully pressure Netanyahu. The Israeli premier, he posited, understood this and chose to drag his feet on making key decisions throughout the war, to buy time until Trump returned to office.