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US president Joe Biden said on Sunday that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet contained some of the “most extreme” members he had seen, accusing them of being “part of the problem” in the occupied West Bank.
Asked on CNN if Netanyahu would be invited to the White House, Biden reiterated his long support for Israel and noted that the Israeli leader was “trying to work through how we can work through his existing problems in terms of his coalition”.
He then said of Netanyahu’s administration: “This one [sic] most extreme members of cabinets that I’ve seen.”
Biden’s unusually frank comments come as Netanyahu’s government, in which ultranationalist settlers, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, hold key roles, pushes ahead with measures designed to boost settlements in the West Bank. Palestinians consider the West Bank the heart of a future state, but Israel has occupied it since 1967.
“It’s not all Israel’s problem now, in the West Bank, but they are a part of the problem,” Biden told CNN.
“Particularly those members of the cabinet who say . . . we can settle anywhere we want, they have no right to be here, etc.”
Biden said of Netanyahu: “We’re talking with him regularly, trying to tamp down what’s going on.”
The US president added that there were “extreme elements” on the Palestinian side too and accused the Palestinian Authority of having “lost credibility”.
Ben-Gvir hit back at Biden’s comments, writing on Twitter that Biden “needs to realise that we are no longer a star on the American flag”.
The international community considers the Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. But since taking office in December, Netanyahu’s government has pushed for their expansion, advancing plans for 13,000 new housing units in existing settlements, almost triple the amount approved last year.
The settlement-boosting measures have come as violence in the West Bank has surged, with this year on course to be the deadliest in the territory since the UN began collecting data in 2005. According to the UN, Israeli forces have killed 146 Palestinians in the territory so far this year, while Palestinians have killed 21 Israelis.
Last week, 12 Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces raided a refugee camp in Jenin. Israel said the operation was needed to prevent militants using the camp as a base from which to attack Israelis. But the raid fuelled fears that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was on the brink of escalation.
There has also been a surge in attacks by settlers on Palestinians. Last month, after Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis near the settlement of Eli, hundreds of settlers rampaged through towns in the West Bank, torching buildings and cars in a series of incidents that Israeli security officials branded “nationalist terrorism”.
One of the attacks took place in Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian town north of Ramallah, where more than 80 per cent of residents have US citizenship. The US said at the time that it expected Israel to prosecute the perpetrators.
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