‘Willing to pay that price’: Netanyahu adviser says clash with US may be unavoidable to vanquish Hamas
Mark Regev, a former international spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Jan. 26. Photo by Screenshot/GPO
By Jacob Kornbluh April 1, 2024
A close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the heightened tension between the Israeli government and the Biden administration over the war in Gaza is a price worth paying to achieve “total victory” over Hamas.
“When the prime minister says ‘total victory,’ we have to win decisively and everything else is secondary,” Mark Regev, a former longtime media adviser and spokesperson for Netanyahu, said in a Zoom conversation hosted by American Friends of Likud, which supports Netanyahu’s political party.
“And if it causes us to fight with some of our friends, well, for us, this is about our survival,” he continued. “And just as we pay a price in human life of our soldiers and an economic price, we have to be willing to pay that price too.”
In the hourlong conversation, Regev — who was Netanyahu’s chief international spokesperson from 2007 to 2016 and has been assisting with public diplomacy since the Oct. 7 attack — described the recent U.S. abstention over a U.N. Security Council ceasefire resolution, and Biden’s endorsement of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s speech calling for new Israeli elections, as a “slap in the face.” Regev, chair of the Abba Eban Institute at Reichman University in Herzliya, said such moves mark a significant departure from the traditional support Israel has come to expect from the U.S.
The American Friends group brags on its LinkedIn page of having “unparalleled access” and “a special relationship” with Likud lawmakers and other Israeli officials, “based on a mutual belief in a right-leaning Likud philosophy.” The group does not directly donate to the Israeli political party or its candidates’ campaigns.
Regev also noted Netanyahu’s blunt rebuke of the U.S. vote to abstain, calling it a signal that “it’s not business as usual” for the prime minister when the U.S. allows Israel to fall victim to an “automatic anti-Israel majority” at the U.N. “If America throws Israel to the walls of the United Nations, it’s problematic with a capital P.”
The U.S. abstention last week allowed the Security Council’s first ceasefire resolution to pass, after vetoes had sunk four previous resolutions.
But temperatures have cooled somewhat since the U.N. vote and Netanyahu’s ensuing decision to call off a planned visit of a high-ranking Israeli delegation for talks with the White House over an impending military operation in Rafah, Regev continued.
“I’d like to hope that we’re coming out of this difficult period, that both sides understand that we have an interest in working together and not to be arguing publicly.”
According to an Axios report, Netanyahu’s senior aides and Israeli military officials took part in a virtual meeting Monday with U.S. officials to discuss alternative strategies proposed by the Biden administration to a military incursion by Israel into Rafah, where about a million Palestinians displaced during the war are sheltering.
Regev acknowledged that support for Netanyahu is plummeting in Israel, where tens of thousands took to the streets Saturday and Sunday to call for new elections. But he maintained that the prime minister’s determination to continue the war and root out Hamas, and his opposition to a postwar Palestinian state, reflect the views of a large majority of the Israeli public.
He referenced a recent poll by Channel 12 that showed only about a third of Israelis are in favor of immediate elections. According to the poll, another third favor new elections after the war and the remaining third prefer to keep to the schedule which calls for elections in 2026.
“These people demonstrating in Jerusalem, they represent the third of Israelis who didn’t like this government in the first place, and they want to call for it to fall,” Regev said. “But most of the Israeli people, two-thirds, don’t want elections now.”
Clarification: The original version of this article implied that the American Friends of Likud was a direct extension of Israel’s Likud Party. It does not give money to the party, but shares its political philosophy and generally supports it through educational programs.
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