Netanyahu’s decision to cancel Rafah meetings causes new rupture with Biden

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision Monday to scrap a planned delegation to Washington — a trip President Joe Biden personally requested a week ago, hoping to offer a constructive approach — amounts to a low point in the ever-deepening rift between the two men.

Netanyahu threatened to pull the delegation if the US did not veto a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday. When the US abstained from the vote, allowing it to pass, the Israeli prime minister followed through, canceling meetings that already amounted to a political risk for Biden.

American officials had planned to offer the Israeli delegation a suite of alternative options for going after Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, hoping to forestall what the US believes would amount to a humanitarian catastrophe if Israel launches a full-scale ground invasion.

Those alternatives will still be shared, American officials said, including in talks early this week between top Biden advisers and Israel’s defense minister. But the public break-off of the in-person talks made for a stark illustration of what has become an increasingly fraught dynamic between Israel and its top backer.

American officials said they were perplexed by Netanyahu’s decision to cancel the delegation after the US allowed the resolution to pass at the United Nations Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Inside the White House, the move was viewed as an overreaction that most likely reflected Netanyahu’s own domestic political concerns, according to a US official. Hours after the delegation was canceled, Israeli minister Gideon Sa’ar submitted his resignation from the current government after not being included in the war cabinet.