Benjamin Netanyahu expected to land in Washington DC this week with a bang. So far, it has been more of a whimper.
The Israeli prime minister has kept a low profile in the US capital, which was stunned by Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to drop out of the presidential race and endorse his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to challenge Donald Trump.
Netanyahu’s first 24 hours have seen a series of small meetings with the families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, in which he said that progress was being made on negotiating a prisoner exchange of the remaining 120 hostages as part of a ceasefire deal but defended delaying for better terms.
“I say at the outset that this will be a process – unfortunately it’s not all at once, there will be stages,” he said, according to remarks of the meeting published by the Times of Israel, “but I believe that we can move a deal forward and maintain the means of pressure that can bring about the release of the others.”
Some of those in the room were family members that Netanyahu had himself brought to Washington onboard his official jet.
Netanyahu however cautioned that the way to reach the deal would be by continuing to apply pressure to Hamas, even as some families of hostages have urged Netanyahu to conclude the deal as quickly as possible. Others have lobbied the Biden administration to put pressure on Netanyahu to cut a deal.
“In no circumstance am I willing to give up on victory over Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “If we let up, we will be in danger from all of Iran’s evil axis.”
A day into his trip, Netanyahu had not publicly met any US officials, and his meeting with Biden, who is recovering from Covid-19, was rescheduled to Thursday. Trump said he would meet the Israeli prime minister on Friday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. No timings for meetings have been released with Harris.
And Biden will address the nation on Wednesday evening, upstaging the Israeli PM once again just hours after Netanyahu was set to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress.
“I think Netanyahu was dismayed that he’s not the center of attention,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who focuses on US foreign policy and the Middle East. “He’s not the center of attention here because of what Biden did and what’s going on with Kamala. And he’s certainly not the center of the attention in Israel.”
On Tuesday, Netanyahu is set to meet with leaders of the US evangelical Christian community, then hold an event with leaders of the local Jewish community, according to his office.
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers were planning to boycott the speech to Congress on Wednesday afternoon. Harris will not be attending, which an aide said was because of a scheduling conflict. According to his public schedule, Netanyahu will meet with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, before the speech.
Some hostage family members have said they hope that Netanyahu would use the visit to Washington to announce a ceasefire deal, which Biden had said was already agreed on as a “framework”.
“We fully expect that his speech is going to be the announcement of this hostage deal that we’ve all been waiting for,” said Jon Polin, the father of one of the hostages, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, during a separate press conference of the families of hostage members in Washington.
Yet analysts have said that Netanyahu may be relying on the war to divert attention from his own political difficulties, or could be delaying a deal until the domestic turmoil in the US resolves and the next president is chosen.
“Benjamin Netanyahu’s world is political survival,” said Miller. “That’s his prime directive. That is what drives him and motivates him.
“I don’t think there’s anything Kamala can do or Biden can do or not do, frankly, that’s going to alter Netanyahu decision making” on the ceasefire, he said. “He will do this based on whether or not he thinks he can get away with it politically.”