Vice President Joe Biden said Monday that the Obama administration is feeling “overwhelming frustration” with Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to expand Jewish settlements.
“We have an overwhelming obligation, notwithstanding our sometimes overwhelming frustration with the Israeli government, to push them as hard as we can toward what they know in their gut is the only ultimate solution, a two-state solution, while at the same time be an absolute guarantor of their security,” Biden said to the J Street lobby group annual gala dinner in Washington Monday night.
Biden said he’s worried about the expansion of Israeli settlements, and argued hat Netanyahu is moving the country in the wrong direction.
“I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years, the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures, they’re moving us and more importantly they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction,” Biden said.
The policies moving Israeli toward one state for Israelis and another for Palestinians are “dangerous,” Biden said.
Biden met with both Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, in March, and indicated that he left those meetings discouraged.
“There is at the moment no political will that I observed from either Israelis or Palestinians to go forward with serious negotiations,” Biden explained. “Both sides have to take responsibility for counterproductive steps that undermine confidence in negotiations.”
Despite these differences, Biden asserted the U.S.’s commitment to Israel.
“No matter what political disagreements we have with Israel – and we do have political disagreements now – there is never any question about our commitment to Israel’s security,” he said.
