Support, and a Warning: Inside Biden and Netanyahu’s Increasingly Fraught Relationship After Hamas’ Oct. 7 Attack
In recent days, a deepening rift has been on display between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At issue: The scope and civilian toll of Israel’s military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack — and what comes next, with the president pressing Israel to embrace a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the prime minister vowing not to repeat what he calls “the mistake” of the Oslo peace agreements in the 1990s.
As the current war continues with devastating consequences, Netanyahu, America & the Road to War in Gaza, a 90-minute FRONTLINE documentary that’s available to stream online and in the PBS App, offers a sweeping examination of critical moments leading up to this time of crisis. Starting with the Oslo Accords and continuing through the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s ongoing retaliation, the documentary examines the pivotal role of a central player, Netanyahu, across three decades of jockeying with Palestinian leadership — and U.S. presidents — over peace efforts and the future of the region.
The opening sequence of the film, embedded above, goes inside Netanyahu’s first in-person meeting with President Biden in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack, which reporting shows was planned in plain sight and shattered the image Netanyahu had cultivated as “the protector of Israel.” The excerpt shows how, on his visit to Israel beginning Oct. 18, Biden expressed support for America’s ally, but also caution.
“We see President Biden come down the stairs from Air Force One onto the tarmac, and he heads straight for Netanyahu, and he wraps his arms around him,” New York Times journalist Peter Baker says in the excerpt of Biden’s arrival in Israel. “It’s called a bear hug, but, in Hebrew, a bear hug can mean wrapping your arms around somebody in order to restrain them as much as to comfort them. And that captured, I think, the dual goals of this trip, right?”
As the excerpt reports, Israel had just begun its retaliation against Hamas. Later that day, Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken took what New York Times journalist Ronen Bergman says was an unusual step: joining Netanyahu’s war cabinet to discuss its plans and the escalating civilian toll in Gaza.
“The fact that State Secretary Blinken and President Biden insist on sitting inside the Israeli war cabinet, which never happened in the history of the relations between the two countries, this is the clearest example: They just don’t trust them,” Bergman says in the clip. “They want to be there and make sure that things are not getting out of control.”
In a speech during his Israel visit, Biden also referenced “mistakes” the U.S. made after a major terror attack within its own borders.
“It was a warning to Netanyahu and to the Israeli people, ‘Don’t make the mistake that we Americans made after 9/11,’ which was to overreact, to do what our enemies wanted us to do and to unleash a military conflict that causes us all sorts of additional problems,” New Yorker journalist Susan Glasser says in the excerpt.
As the excerpt explores, some two months after Biden’s warning, Gaza is being described as a “graveyard for children,” thousands of Palestinians are dead, Hamas is still holding Israeli hostages, and the U.S. is facing mounting criticism for its support of Israel.
“The problem is that no one knows what will need to happen for Israelis to feel satisfied that they’ve achieved their stated objective of having destroyed Hamas,” Khaled Elgindy of the Middle East Institute, a former adviser to Palestinian negotiators, says in the excerpt. “And so all that’s left is to just keep killing and bombing and killing and bombing, until when?”
Baker poses another question raised by the current situation.
“With all this death and destruction, it’s hard not to look back and say, where did the road turn?” he asks. “When did it become inevitable that we would head to this cataclysmic conflict?”
For the full story, watch Netanyahu, America & the Road to War in Gaza:
A two-part, two-hour special featuring the 90-minute film and Failure at the Fence, a short documentary with The Washington Post, premiered on Dec. 19, 2023. Netanyahu, America & the Road to War in Gaza is available to watch on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, the PBS App and the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. The documentary is a FRONTLINE Production with Left/Right Docs. Directed by James Jacoby. Written by James Jacoby and Anya Bourg. Produced by Anya Bourg and Lauren Ezell Kinlaw. Co-produced by Christina Avalos and Chris O’Coin. The senior producers are Eamonn Matthews and Frank Koughan. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
This story has been updated.
