“Netanyahu may very well be making these moves signaling Israel’s going into Rafah to keep the pressure on” the cease-fire and hostage-deal negotiations, says Benjamin Friedman, policy director and a Middle East expert at Defense Priorities, a realist foreign policy think tank in Washington.
“Netanyahu likes the optics of defying the Biden administration and saying, ‘We Israelis can defend ourselves and do things on our own,’” says Mr. Friedman. “He knows that if he says publicly, ‘I can’t go into Rafah because of Biden and all the other international pressures,’ he risks losing his coalition, and as a result losing power.”
As for the path ahead, Mr. Friedman says he sees Israel staying the course toward greater regional cooperation that it was already on before the war. Where Israel’s execution of the war will have greater impact, he adds, is on Israel’s relations with Europeans and other “liberal Western countries” that place a priority on issues like human rights and treatment of the Palestinians.
Read at Christian Science Monitor
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