Biden told Netanyahu that he expected a ‘significant de-escalation by day’s end on the path to a cease-fire’

WASHINGTON, May 20 (AP): It’s a story Joe Biden has loved recounting over the decades: A chain-smoking Golda Meir welcoming the 30-year-old senator to Israel on his first visit in 1973 and giving him a grandmotherly hug before schooling him on the Six-Day War and the dangers still faced by Israel.
A classified Israeli government memo, though, paints a less anodyne version of Biden’s meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister that day, reporting that the young senator privately displayed an enthusiasm that signalled his lack of diplomatic experience as he laid out his concerns over land seized in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israel years earlier. The document was published last year by Israel’s Channel 13.
For Biden it was the start of a familiar dynamic. Over his nearly 50 years in national politics, he has often reserved his toughest messages for Israeli leaders for private talks while publicly burnishing his image as an unwavering supporter of Israel.
The pattern holds true to the present, as Biden has delivered his most pointed messages for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the conflict with Hamas in Gaza during private conversations while having little to say in public.
For days, as Hamas rockets have flown toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza, Biden resisted mounting calls from some Democrats and UN Security Council members to more forcefully pressure Israel for a cease-fire.
On Wednesday, in their fourth conversation in eight days, Biden told Netanyahu that he expected a “significant de-escalation by day’s end on the path to a cease-fire,” according to a White House summary of the phone call.
But hours later, Biden didn’t make even a passing reference to the Gaza war or his diplomacy during a commencement speech at the US Coast Guard Academy as he spoke of the need to face accelerating global challenges.
In 1982, Washington was the setting when Biden was among a group of US lawmakers who had a tense meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Biden reportedly pressed Begin to halt the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while some of his colleagues were critical of other aspects of Israel’s policies.
“I think it is fair to say that in my eight years in Washington I’ve never seen such an angry session with a foreign head of state,” Sen. Paul Tsongas, a Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters after the meeting.
Overall, Biden has hewed to the US establishment line of reaffirming a financial commitment to Israel regardless of its actions toward Palestinians, while frequently reminding Jewish American audiences of his personal closeness to their community.
In a 1986 Senate floor speech, he offered a fulsome defense of US aid to Israel calling it the best USD 3 billion investment we make and urged colleagues to stop apologising for their support of the country.
Biden has spoken to Jewish audiences about building bonds with the nine Israeli prime ministers who’ve overlapped with his own time in elected office, recalled his father teaching him about the horrors of Nazi efforts to rid Europe of Jews, and noted that he took each of his children to visit the Dachau concentration camp.
On the lighter side, he often jokes that his daughter gave him every Irish-Catholic father’s dream when she married a Jewish surgeon.
But there have also been moments where Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu has seeped into public view.
As vice president, he kept Netanyahu waiting for a dinner meeting after the Israeli leader embarrassed Biden and President Barack Obama by approving the construction of 1,600 new apartments in disputed east Jerusalem in the middle of Biden’s 2010 visit to Israel.
Netanyahu sought to patch up hurt feelings at the dinner. But after the meal, Biden admonished the prime minister in a statement, saying the move undermined an Obama administration effort to persuade the Palestinians to resume peace talks.
Amid ongoing tension between Obama and Netanyahu, Biden went out of his way during a 2014 speech before the Jewish Federations of North America to note that he and Netanyahu were still buddies albeit with a somewhat complicated relationship.
Biden noted that he had once inscribed a photo for Netanyahu with the message “Bibi I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.”