President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel put on pleasant faces and offered polite words on camera on Thursday as they opened a meeting at the White House at a fraught moment in their relationship with the future of the Middle East on the line.
The president smiled broadly and chatted amiably with Mr. Netanhayu in their first session together in the White House since Mr. Biden took office while the prime minister offered effusive words of praise for his service. But the brief bonhomie masked the deep tensions between them over the war in Gaza and American efforts to broker a cease-fire.
“Well, welcome back, Mr. Prime Minister,” Mr. Biden said as the two sat down in the Oval Office. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. I think we should get to it.”
But the president offered no thoughts about the situation on the ground while reporters were in the room and instead turned the floor over to Mr. Netanyahu, who used the opportunity to express gratitude now that Mr. Biden has dropped his bid for a second term and is winding up his long political career.
“Mr. President, we’ve known each other for 40 years and you’ve known every Israeli prime minister for 50 years, from Golda Meir,” Mr. Netanyahu told him. “So from a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish American Zionist, I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the state of Israel. And I look forward to discussing with you today and working with you in the months ahead on the great issues before us.”
Mr. Biden grinned at the reference to him as a “Irish American Zionist” and then said he looked forward to their discussions as well. “By the way, that first meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir, and she had an assistant sitting next to me, a guy named Rabin,” he said, referring to Yitzhak Rabin, who would later serve as prime minister himself. “That’s how far back it goes. I was only 12 then.”
Neither man referenced their disagreements over the conduct of Israel’s war against Hamas nor did they give any hint of the state of negotiations over a possible cease-fire agreement that would suspend and eventually end the war in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Mr. Biden has pressed Israel and Hamas to make a deal but even as Mr. Netanyahu has said he is willing to make an agreement if certain conditions are met, he has been reluctant to end the war without ensuring that Hamas can never repeat the terrorist attack it mounted on Oct. 7.
The meeting in the Oval Office came a day after Mr. Netanyahu used an address to a joint meeting of Congress to denounce critics of the conduct of Israel’s war against Hamas, particularly left-wing protesters he termed “useful idiots.” Police used pepper spray outside the Capitol at the time to push back thousands of protesters, some of whom burned an American flag and marred statues with slogans like “Hamas is coming.”
The post Biden and Netanyahu Meet With a Show of Amiable Relations Amid Their Tension appeared first on New York Times.