Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is returning to the Middle East this week with the goals of getting Israel to curtail attacks that are killing thousands of Palestinian civilians and preventing the war from spreading across the region.
But previously unreported details of a clash between Mr. Blinken and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel point to the challenges ahead.
During a private meeting in November, Mr. Blinken told Mr. Netanyahu that the Israelis would have to agree to a series of pauses in the fighting in Gaza to let more aid flow into the war zone and to allow civilians to leave areas under attack.
Mr. Netanyahu refused, U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation in Jerusalem. Mr. Blinken then said he would announce the Biden administration’s demand in a news conference, which prompted Mr. Netanyahu to scramble to pre-empt him by issuing a defiant statement by video. “‘I told him, ‘We swore and I swore to eliminate Hamas,’” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Nothing will stop us.”
That standoff on Nov. 3 brings into sharp relief the evolving relationship between the United States and its most important partner in the Middle East, a relationship that President Biden has charged Mr. Blinken with shepherding during a spiraling crisis.
Since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, Mr. Biden has strongly supported Israel’s war in Gaza, in which the Israeli military, armed with American weapons, has killed more than 22,0000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry.
But as Mr. Blinken flies into the Middle East for the fourth time since October, Mr. Biden and his aides are increasingly struggling with their Israeli counterparts over a range of critical issues, including the need to lessen civilian casualties, the risks of a wider regional war and the shape of a post-conflict Gaza.
Those disagreements are likely to continue when Mr. Blinken arrives in Israel amid a marathon of stops over a week: Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He also plans to visit the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.
“We don’t expect every conversation on this trip to be easy,” the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Thursday. “There are obviously tough issues facing the region and difficult choices ahead.”
For Mr. Blinken, it is a New Year’s return to intensive Middle East shuttle diplomacy that began last fall, after two years of overwhelming focus on Russia’s war in Ukraine and on China. By some measures it is the most challenging assignment of his tenure as secretary of state.
In contrast to the Biden administration’s almost unequivocal support for Ukraine, Mr. Blinken has been trying to balance support for Israel’s war against Hamas with efforts to limit Palestinian suffering. That has created tensions with some U.S. allies abroad, and political pressure at home — even at Mr. Blinken’s Virginia residence, where on Thursday protesters near the driveway splashed fake blood on his government S.U.V. and held signs branding him a “war criminal.”
Within the State Department, employees have sent Mr. Blinken at least three dissent cables since October objecting to the administration’s policy on the war.
Mr. Blinken will also speak with officials across the region about freeing the 129 hostages, including about eight Americans, who Israel says are still being held in Gaza. And he intends to tackle the thorny topics of plans for governing Gaza and prospects for reaching a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians once this conflict is over.
“It’s going to be a lot of hard conversations,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Elgindy was skeptical that Mr. Blinken could make much progress in winning more protections for Gaza’s civilians, or shaping Israel’s post-conflict plans. “I don’t know how well that’s going to go because they’ve been having the same conversation for three months and not made much headway,” he said.
The subject of what follows the war in Gaza could be the most difficult of all. Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken have renewed their calls for a long-term political settlement in which Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state. But Mr. Netanyahu told reporters last month that he is “proud” to have blocked a Palestinian state during his multiple turns as prime minister since the 1990s. “They’re just on different planets,” Mr. Elgindy said.
One major issue is the pressure Mr. Netanyahu faces from his governing coalition’s right-wing members, with whom the Biden administration is growing openly frustrated. On Tuesday the State Department sharply rebuked two Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, after they advocated the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.
