Senator Tim Kaine, a former vice-presidential nominee and leading foreign policy voice in the Democratic party, has said Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”.

In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Kaine accused the prime minister of making Israel “dramatically less safe” and hurting its longstanding relationship with the US, and said the US president had come to realise the limits of his influence.

The Democratic senator for Virginia is best known nationally as Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election, a race they lost to Republicans Donald Trump and Mike Pence. The Biden ally is a member of the Senate foreign relations and armed services committees.

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