Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/Handout/Getty Images
Amos Hochstein (left), senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) in West Jerusalem on June 17, 2024. (Photo by Amos Ben Gershom (GPO)/Distribution/Anadolu via Getty Images)
CNN
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US Special Envoy Amos Hochstein told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting in Israel on Tuesday that the prime minister’s public comments this week that the US was “withholding arms and ammunition from Israel” were “counterproductive” and “more importantly, completely unfounded,” a senior US administration official told CNN.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew also listed all the weapons the U.S. has transferred to Israel in recent months and reiterated that Netanyahu’s comments were false, the official said. A U.S. embassy spokesman in Israel confirmed that Lew spoke with Netanyahu on Tuesday. The spokesman reiterated that “with the exception of ongoing discussions on large caliber weapons, the other items have been delivered, are in the process of being delivered, or are in the normal review process.”
The exchange between Hochstein and Netanyahu was first reported by Axios.
The meeting reflected growing administration frustration with the Israeli prime minister’s public comments, which another senior administration official told CNN were “incomprehensible” and “wrong.”
While this is not the first time that Netanyahu has publicly criticized the Biden administration over the course of the Israeli-Hamas war, this week’s public spat comes as the stakes remain very high over the Gaza war and the possibility of further conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Both the Israeli prime minister and President Joe Biden are facing growing political pressure at home over their response to the war.
Hochstein’s comments to Netanyahu are not the first time a U.S. official has privately pushed back against Netanyahu’s public comments, but some U.S. officials want the Biden administration to go further, one administration official said.
Such frustration appears to have led to the postponement of a U.S.-Israeli Strategic Consultative Group (SDG) meeting originally scheduled for Thursday, where Iran was one of the topics on the agenda, according to a senior administration official. But the official and a senior White House official disputed the claim that the meeting was postponed in response to Netanyahu’s comments, stressing that it was never set in stone. Senior U.S. and Israeli meetings this week are expected to continue, including on Wednesday, the official said, and Thursday’s meeting in question could be rescheduled as early as next week.
Still, another U.S. official insisted Thursday’s meeting had been taken off the schedule to send a message to Netanyahu, similar to when the Israeli leader canceled a delegation visit to the United States in March in protest at a U.S. abstention in a key U.N. vote, the official said.
“We have been working on scheduling the next SDG meeting, taking into account travel and availability of key personnel, but details have not yet been fully finalized and so nothing has been canceled,” a White House official told CNN. “Meanwhile, meetings with Israeli officials are taking place throughout the week, at expert and senior levels, on a range of topics. As I stated in yesterday’s briefing, we have no idea what the prime minister is talking about, but that is not a reason to reschedule the meeting.”
In a video posted to X on Tuesday, Netanyahu publicly asserted that the Biden administration is “holding back weapons” and claimed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken “has assured me that the administration is working around the clock to remove these bottlenecks.”
The top US diplomat refused to discuss his conversation with Netanyahu last week, saying: “I’m not going to talk about what was said in those diplomatic conversations.”
“Again, we remain committed to ensuring Israel has what it needs to defend itself against all threats,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday, confirming that the delivery of one heavy bomb remained on hold.
“We continue to process these various cases through our system in the normal course of action,” Blinken said, noting that “these cases take a long time to process and many of the cases sent to Israel will not arrive for years.”
