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JERUSALEM — The Biden administration’s failure on Monday to veto a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza is putting further strain on the administration’s relationship with America’s closest ally in the region, Israel.
“The U.S. action at the U.N. has driven U.S.-Israel relations to a low point in their history and left America’s reputation as a credible ally in ruins,” Caroline Glick, one of Israel’s leading experts on American-Israeli relations, told Fox News Digital. She continued, “Israel is engaged in a multi-front war against Iran and its proxies for its survival. In Tehran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Jordan, Israel’s enemies saw on Monday that the U.S. has abandoned Israel at the height of the war, effectively adopting Hamas’ positions as its own.”
When approached about the U.N. vote and the state of U.S.-Israel relations, a State Department spokesperson referred Fox News Digital to spokesperson Matthew Miller’s remarks during Monday’s press briefing.Â
Glick, a former adviser to Netanyahu, noted, “The administration’s actions at the U.N. Security Council were a betrayal of Israel and of the hostages. By allowing resolution 2728 to pass, the U.S. blocked all paths to a diplomatic deal to secure the release of any hostages. By decoupling what Hamas wants — a cease-fire that will allow it to rebuild its terror army and its control over Gaza and so win the war — from the release of the hostages, Resolution 2728 seals the hostages’ fate.”Â
America’s top U.N. diplomat issued caveats at the Security Council meeting on Tuesday. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told the council that “we did not agree with everything” in the resolution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Israeli Defense Force soldiers on the front lines ahead of the initial ground invasion. (Benjamin Netanyahu – ×‘× ×™×ž×™×Ÿ × ×ª× ×™×”×• @netanyahu)
The dire plight of the hostages has become a kind of political football, and the grueling conditions in Rafah, where Israeli intelligence officials believe the hostages are being held, will only get progressively worse as time unfolds.
“The only way to free them now is by rescuing them through direct military action. Hamas made this clear when they changed their position from accepting a swap of 40 hostages for 700 terrorists, (including 100 murderers) to demanding a full cessation of the war and a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza,” said Glick.
Amos Harel, a senior military correspondent for the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who has deep sourcing within Israel’s intelligence and defense establishment, wrote on Tuesday, “Senior defense officials are very worried about the worsening relations with America and the deterioration in Israel’s international standing. Their fear, which is shared by every key officeholder, is that this is the start of a process that will go on for years and be very difficult to stop.”
“Netanyahu has repeatedly infuriated the United States and other friendly Western governments in the 15 months since his far-right government was sworn in. The West’s grievances intensified as the war in Gaza bogged down, and especially as Netanyahu refused to discuss postwar political arrangements for Gaza,” he added.
