President Biden pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Friday to agree to the creation of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza is over and raised options that would limit Palestinian sovereignty to make the prospect more palatable to Israel.
Hoping to overcome Mr. Netanyahu’s strenuous resistance, Mr. Biden floated the possibility of a disarmed Palestinian nation that would not threaten Israel’s security. While there was no indication that Mr. Netanyahu would ease his opposition, which is popular with his fragile right-wing political coalition, Mr. Biden expressed optimism that they may yet find consensus.
“There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” the president told reporters at the White House several hours after the call, their first in nearly a month amid tension over the war. “There’s a number of countries that are members of the U.N. that are still — don’t have their own militaries. Number of states that have limitations.” He added, “And so I think there’s ways in which this could work.”
Asked what Mr. Netanyahu was open to, Mr. Biden said, “I’ll let you know.” But he rejected the notion that a so-called two-state solution is impossible as long as Mr. Netanyahu is in power — “no, it’s not” — and he brushed off the idea of imposing conditions on American security aid to Israel if the prime minister continues to resist.
There isn’t really a third option. I’m not a fan of Biden and wanted to see either Sanders or Warren win the Primary back in 2020. And I still think a Sanders win in 2016 would have put the US on a very different trajectory, but ya know, it was Her turn and DNC Primary voters got what they asked for. So now we’re stuck with the reality we have, rather than the realty we want. And the political reality in the US is that the next US President is either going to be Joe Biden or Donald Trump (talk of Trump losing the GOP primary is just wishful thinking and news sites trying to drive clicks). We don’t have an option which doesn’t support genocide in Palestine. So, once again, we’re stuck choosing the lesser of two evils. We either get a President who might ask for Israel to think about not engaging in genocide, and whose other policies are fairly reasonable. Or, we can have a President who will likely ask how he can get in on raping Palestinians while also trying to fuck over the American people as hard as possible. Ya, our politics is currently fucked, but we can’t un-fuck it by letting a bigger dick fuck us all.