A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.
Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in the hostage negotiations, as mediators try to secure a deal before Trump’s January 20 inauguration. On Saturday, Witkoff flew to Israel for a meeting with Netanyahu at the premier’s Jerusalem office.
During the meeting, Witkoff urged Netanyahu to accept key compromises necessary for an agreement, the two Arab officials on Monday told The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity. Neither Witkoff nor Netanyahu’s office responded to requests for comment.
lol bullshit. This is showboating political theatrics.
Bibi and Trump are playing their respective games but make no mistake: Bibi already got everything he wanted moving forward. Couldn’t have been more obvious, too, that Bibi and Trump were in direct discussions about preventing a deal pre-election in order to help Trump win.
This is no different than Trump and Putin’s public optics, and no different to how Trump undermined the border security bill.
Why is everyone so hell bent on not giving Trump credit for doing something good?
If Biden truly wanted to achieve this ceasefire, all he had to do was stop sending weapons. It is abundantly clear that Biden did not try to achieve a ceasefire. Nor did Biden have any desire to do so.
Because if I wasn’t clear the first time, it’s bullshit.
Let’s invoke a thought-experiment and play said hypothetical out:
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Stops sending weapons.
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Bibi conveniently ignores intelligence if another real or false flag October-7th like attack.
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Democrats lose with certainty, accused of both being Antisemitic (by Russian, Israeli bots, AIPAC, etc.) and leaving poor Israel defenseless against evildoer terrorists.
Ah yes. Sound strategy.
Biden kept sending weapons after he lost the election. And the genocide had been going on long before the election. And it only cost the Democrats votes. You are making up so many bad excuses to avoid facing reality.
Between November 5th and now would have done exactly jack shit. Especially when that would be immediately reversed by Trump anyway. Besides, it’s not as though the Democratic party ceases to exist. What makes you think Israel still wouldn’t do that in order to justify even worse atrocities, then blame Democrats anyway? That’s what’s called a High Risk / Low Reward play.
But nah man, keep believing Trump will be better, or hell even “equally bad.” If you genuinely care about Palestinians, then you’re about to get a wake-up call. Moving the embassy to Jeruselum while telling Bibi to, “Finish the job.” Well, mission accomplished I guess.
Though with anonymity and online astroturfing operations I cannot rule out the viable alternative.
Truly I cannot believe how after all this time and everything Trump and Bibi has done that people are still naive enough to believe they’re acting in good faith and not entirely for political optics. Absolutely remarkable.
I will take Trump stopping a genocide for optics over Biden not stopping a genocide for optics. But whatever you need to justify your world view.
You could at least wait until he actually stops it before giving him credit. It’s not like he has a history of following through on his promises.
I did. The Israeli government just signed the ceasefire.
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