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Thomas L. Friedman

By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Davos, Switzerland

It looks as if President Biden will be running in two races this year: one in America against Donald Trump and one in Israel against Benjamin Netanyahu. Maybe Trump could name Netanyahu his running mate and we could save a lot of time. Biden’s support for the Israeli leader is costing him with his own progressive base, while Netanyahu is now turning on Biden in ways that could win Trump fresh support from right-wing American Jews. Trump-Netanyahu 2024 — that has a certain ring to it, not to mention an air of truth.

Why do I say this? Because at a nationally televised news conference on Thursday, Netanyahu made clear something he only hinted at in recent weeks. Despite the disastrous Hamas attack on Oct. 7 happening on his watch, he is going to frame his campaign to stay in power with this argument: The Americans and the Arabs want to force a Palestinian state down Israel’s throat, and I am the only Israeli leader strong enough to resist them. So vote for me, even if I messed up on Oct. 7 and the Gaza war is not going all that great. Only I can protect us from Biden’s plans for Gaza to become part of a Palestinian state, along with the West Bank, governed by a transformed Palestinian Authority.

I know what you’re asking: You mean Netanyahu would actually run for re-election by positioning himself against the American president who flew over to Israel right after Oct. 7, where he put a protective arm around Bibi and the whole Israeli body politic and basically gave Israel a green light to try to destroy Hamas in Gaza, even if it led to thousands of Palestinian civilians being killed in the process? You mean to save his own political skin, Netanyahu would actually run on a platform that would guarantee Israel had no American, Palestinian, Arab or European partners to help Israel govern or exit Gaza or get its hostages back?

Yes, I am seeing and saying both. Although Israel has been at war with Hamas for over 100 days and still has over 100 hostages to recover, Netanyahu’s No. 1 focus is Netanyahu.

He’s searching for the most emotive political message to get him just enough votes from the far right to remain prime minister and stay out of prison, should he lose any of the three corruption cases against him.

Let me walk you through the sequence of events that transpired this week that led to this conclusion, as I was a close-up witness to part of them.

On Wednesday, I interviewed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, first offstage for this column and then before a large audience at the Davos World Economic Forum. In the public session I asked him to briefly explain something I had discussed in private with him: why it feels as if Israel is losing on three key fronts and why Israel could turn things around on those fronts if it had a legitimate, effective Palestinian partner.

The three fronts where Israel is losing:

First, even though Hamas started this war by murdering, maiming, kidnapping and raping Israeli civilians just across the border, Hamas seems to be winning the global narrative war on social media because of the thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza caused by Israeli bombing the Hamas fighters who had deliberately embedded themselves in tunnels and next to homes of Palestinian civilians.

Second, Netanyahu still has not defined a political outcome for Gaza, a plan for keeping the peace and overseeing governance and security, or a legitimate Palestinian partner to help make it all happen. Without that, Israel could be stuck in Gaza forever.

And third, Israel is being attacked from afar by pro-Iranian nonstate actors, particularly the Houthis from Yemen and Hezbollah from Lebanon. And the only way for Israel to deter and counter their threats, particularly when it is still tied down fighting in Gaza, is with the help of global and regional allies.

The answer to all three challenges, I argued to Blinken at........

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