Former US president Joe Biden accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of ignoring US demands to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, making empty promises, and prioritizing his political interests over Israel’s well-being in excerpts from Biden’s new memoir that CNN has published.
Some sections from Promise Me, America concentrate on the deteriorating relationship between Biden and Netanyahu after Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
“I had been calling on Israel to take precautions to reduce civilian suffering since the beginning of the conflict,” Biden wrote.
He claimed Netanyahu acknowledged that rising Palestinian casualties were damaging Israel’s image and American support for the war, yet repeatedly failed to change Israel’s conduct.
“When we called them on it, the Israelis always had an explanation or excuse, but the result was the same,” Biden wrote.
Biden also questioned Netanyahu’s trustworthiness, accusing him of prioritizing his own political survival over Israel’s long-term interests.
“Bibi had no qualms about making promises he had no power – or intention – to keep,” Biden said.
“I was frustrated by his failure to think like a statesman and safeguard Israel’s long-term interests, not just his own short-term political needs,” he recalled.
Former Biden officials recount White House tensions with Netanyahu
Biden’s account follows several memoirs by former administration officials detailing tensions with Netanyahu during the war.
Brett McGurk, who served as deputy assistant to Biden and National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa and led hostage negotiations, detailed the tensions between Biden and Netanyahu in his book Brink, published last month.
Following the April 2024 Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza, McGurk recalled Biden confronting Netanyahu at what he described as a “boiling point.”
Biden and Netanyahu clashed over multiple decisions, including the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, which Netanyahu said could strengthen Israel’s position and Biden thought could put hostage negotiations at risk.
That said, McGurk placed most of the responsibility for the negotiating deadlock on Hamas, arguing that public US pressure on Israel strengthened the terrorist organization’s position.
Phil Gordon, then-US vice president Kamala Harris’s national security advisor, told The Jerusalem Post in October that McGurk’s account did not tell the whole story and that Netanyahu introduced additional demands in July 2024 that delayed an agreement by about six months.
These included maintaining IDF forces along the Philadelphi Corridor and monitoring Palestinians returning to northern Gaza.
Gordon said that these conditions made an agreement impossible for another six months, during which nearly 9,000 additional Palestinians were killed, while more Israeli hostages died, including the six hostages executed by Hamas in August 2024.
Alternatively, he stressed, no one could have known whether greater flexibility by Netanyahu would have produced an agreement in the summer of 2024.
Nevertheless, he argued, Netanyahu’s insistence on those conditions had a clear consequence.
Harris criticizes Netanyahu, Biden in memoir
Harris also criticized Netanyahu in her memoir, 107 Days, published last year, claiming he preferred US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House because he believed Trump would support more aggressive plans for Gaza.
“He wanted Trump to be the one sitting across from him,” Harris wrote.
She also accused Netanyahu of stalling negotiations during a July 2024 meeting.
Biden was a target of her criticism as well, with Harris arguing that he struggled to demonstrate the same empathy for Palestinian suffering that he expressed toward Israeli and Ukrainian civilians.
Biden addresses criticism of his mental fitness
Meanwhile, the former American president has challenged allegations of declining mental fitness, particularly those raised by then-US Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur in February 2024.
To this end, Biden said that investigators interviewed him on October 8 and 9, 2023, immediately after the Hamas attacks.
“I had been up all night dealing with the aftershocks of a profound change to the global order. Go ask the Israeli leadership if they thought they were dealing with a diminished president that day,” Biden wrote.
The 480-page Promise Me, America is scheduled for publication on November 17.