Joe Biden's Impotence Over Israel 'Embarrassing': Ahmad Tibi

Ahmad Tibi is used to threats.

A veteran Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset and a political adviser to late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the intimidation Tibi faces is tied to the many cycles of violence between Israel and Palestinian militant factions that have scarred both sides across his 25 years in the spotlight.

"There are always these threats in every war in the last two decades," Tibi told Newsweek in an exclusive interview, as Israel's ferocious bid to destroy the Hamas militant group in the besieged Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank raged.

"This time, it's much more aggressive, brutal, and intense...It's a daily issue. From the very beginning of the war, I have been intimidated with threats to kill me, my family, my colleagues. It's not stopping. It's continuous."

Tibi leads the Ta'al party, which advocates for the two-state solution and the rights of Arabs living in Israel. He has been branded a "terrorist" by nationalist colleagues for his support of Palestinian resistance groups. In 2021, he prompted fury among colleagues by describing three West Bank militants killed by Israeli security forces as "martyrs."

In October, dozens of Israeli soldiers were filmed chanting "Ahmad Tibi is dead" and "Ahmad Tibi is a son of a bitch," a reflection of the vitriol toward the lawmaker among certain sections of Israeli society.

Three members of Tibi's extended family have already been killed in Gaza. The lawmaker said that the Israeli airstrike that killed Saher Tibi, 50; Faisal Tibi, 19; and Ahmad Tibi, 10, was conducted "with total support of President Joe Biden."

The White House's inability to reign in Israel's war, Tibi added, is "embarrassing."

Newsweek has contacted the White House by email to request comment.

'War Psychosis'

Israel's war on Hamas—and with it, on the Gaza Strip—is approaching the four-month mark. The operation was launched in response to the October 7 Hamas infiltration operation into southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken back into Gaza as hostages. Many of those captives remain unaccounted for.

As of Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 27,000 Palestinians in Gaza, per figures published by the Associated Press. The true death toll is believed to be higher considering the missing people buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Some 1.9 million Gazans—representing more than 80 percent of the population—have been internally displaced, and around 45 percent of residential buildings in the besieged Strip destroyed, per a World Bank survey.

On the Israeli side, 224 soldiers have been killed and 2,784 soldiers wounded in the incursion. A quarter of these have been severely injured.

Israel, Tibi said, has descended into a state of "war psychosis."

"Eradicating all of Gaza, destroying all of Gaza, sending an atomic bomb to Gaza, sending a Jericho missile to Gaza, there are no innocents in Gaza: these things are not only said by ultra-fascist politicians, but some of these things are being said in the center or even on the left," he said.

"Some of those demanded to cause starvation in Gaza, or even—as [retired] General [Giora] Eiland proposed—to cause widespread diseases in Gaza, which is horrible. These are horrible proposals. It seems that these usually normal people are proposing very much abnormal and pathological proposals.

"The vast majority of Israelis think that 30,000 killed Palestinians is not enough, there should be more and more."

The bloodletting shows no sign of easing. Hamas is still operational and its leaders still at large. "Eradicating" the decentralized guerrilla group, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has committed to, may prove an unachievable ambition. Meanwhile, Israel's goal wartime coalition government has not made clear its plan for postwar—known as "the day after"—in Gaza.

The veteran leader has repeatedly pushed back on calls to renew talks on an independent Palestinian state and has hinted at an open-ended military campaign in Gaza. Meanwhile, his far-right coalition partners are urging renewed Israel settlements in the Palestinian territory, reviving those abandoned in Israel's 2005 withdrawal.

Cabinet members like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir—who has previously been convicted of supporting a Zionist terrorist group and is among those to have branded Tibi a "terrorist"—and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich appear to sense an opening in the Gaza policy vacuum.

Both men, and a host of others from the far-right and from Netanyahu's Likud party, this week attended a conference calling for new settlements to be built in devastated Gaza. "Without settlements there is no security," Smotrich told the attendees. Ben Gvir said: "If don't want another October 7, we need to return home and control the land."

"It seems that they like the new opportunity," Tibi said of his far-right colleagues.

Pax Americana?

The U.S.-sponsored Oslo Accords formalized the concept of a two-state solution in the 1990s. Three decades on, it appears defunct. Netanyahu is openly pushing back on international calls—led by the U.S.—for the revival of talks on Palestinian statehood.

The administration has repeatedly—though relatively gently—pressed Israel to do more to limit the death toll in Gaza and settler violence in the occupied West Bank. This week, the U.S. imposed sanctions on four settlers linked to recent attacks there, a rare step interpreted as a broader warning to Israel's extreme elements.

But such steps won't convince Tibi—or many other Palestinians—that the U.S. is neutral or effective. They may also do little to win back progressive Americans infuriated by American support for Israel's war. For pro-Palestinians in the U.S., "Genocide Joe" has become toxic.

"Those radical ministers have much more influence on the situation and the decisions of Israel than President Biden," Tibi said, referring to Ben Gvir and Smotrich. "I do believe that President Biden can do much more, and he is not. He is engaged in the war, not in bringing an end to the war and opening new opportunities.

"The international community, mainly the American administration and Europe, is enabling this. I never thought that in 2023 there would be both the October 7 in south Israel, and—even more—there would be this continuous mass killing in Gaza by the Israeli army, with the continuous support of ammunition by the U.S.

"I think that Biden and the U.S. administration can stop the war. They can, because they directed the situation from the very beginning. Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken took part more than once in cabinet sessions. They were part of managing the war."

"There is consensus in Israel that without the United States, Israel cannot continue to exist, even. Israelis say that. There is a lot of gratitude among Israelis for the position of the United States," Tibi added, particularly military support and diplomatic backing at the United Nations Security Council, plus the White House's denouncement of the genocide case brought against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

"The U.S. is still describing what is being done in Gaza—after 30,000 Palestinians killed—as 'self-defense,'" Tibi continued. "It is not. As many in the States have said, it is not proportional. It's much more than that."

In November, shortly after his wartime visit to Israel, Biden declared: "Gaza must never again be used as a platform for terrorism. There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory."

"After this war is over, the voices of Palestinian people and their aspirations" must be at the heart of "post-crisis governance in Gaza," the president wrote in a letter.

But for Tibi, the U.S. has already abdicated its role as arbiter.

"I don't believe there is one Palestinian who believes those statements of President Biden about 'the day after'. In the last two months, talking about the day after, Netanyahu blocked President Biden. It's embarrassing.

"President Biden is not able to reopen the American consulate in Jerusalem. Mr. Biden is not capable of moving checkpoints in the West Bank. He is not capable of stopping settler violence. Do you want Palestinians to believe that he is capable of enforcing the two-state solution?

"If there will be a vote for the two-state solution, for a Palestinian state in the UN, the United States will vote against. Even today, we heard that they are reconsidering their position about supporting a Palestinian state...I don't believe them. We don't believe them.

"They are supporting bringing food and humanitarian support to Gaza, at the same time as they are supplying Israel with ammunition and bombs in order to bomb Gaza, which will create more and more crises, which will create more and more humanitarian aid. It's unbelievable."

The Biden administration has consistently stressed its discomfort with the mounting casualties in the Palestinian regions, and urged calm in the West Bank, where Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinians and arrested thousands since October 7.

But Tibi spoke of a deep-seated perception that Palestinian lives are less valued than those of Israelis, a conclusion Palestinians say are supported by the gulf between the tallies of Palestinian and Israeli dead in recent decades.

"President Biden is dealing in a very discriminatory way about the value of Israelis versus Palestinians," Tibi said. "We do believe that children are equal if they are Israelis, or if they are Palestinians. We are against killing Israeli civilians, and we are against killing Palestinian civilians.

"They do deal with the Palestinians as inferiors. Between now and the very beginning of the war, they have not denounced one thing the Israelis did. They have never said, 'We denounce'. It seems that [John] Kirby, the spokesman of the National Security Council, people think that he is capable of being the spokesman of Likud."

Bibi vs. Tibi

Some of Tibi's fiercest criticism is reserved for Netanyahu, Israel's great political survivor who in 2020 ran with an electoral slogan of "Bibi, Not Tibi." It was an effort to fire up his right-wing base against the candidacy of centrist Benny Gantz, who Netanyahu—known colloquially by his childhood nickname "Bibi"—claimed would need Arab-Israeli backing to form a government.

Netanyahu has held the Israeli premiership six times, making him the longest-serving leader in the country's history. But Israel's great survivor might be running out of time. Netanyahu was already struggling with voter pressure related to corruption allegations, controversial judicial reforms, and his alliance with right-wing extremists. The carnage of October 7 may yet prove the death knell for "Mr. Security."

"The most important issue on 'the day after' is the day after Netanyahu," Tibi said.

"The man is responsible for the Israeli failure of October 7, he is responsible for the loss of 1,200 Israelis—part of whom were civilians, woman and children. People in Israel feel that the government of Israel left them without defense, unprotected, because they sent forces of the army to the West Bank protecting settlers...The priorities of this fascist government are very much obvious."

Newsweek has contacted the prime minister's office by email to request comment.

Fellow opposition leader Yair Lapid is also calling for new elections. "After the greatest disaster in the country's history, we need a government that will regain the trust of the public, the trust of the security system, that will have a plan for the day after," Lapid said last month. The current government, he warned, is "dangerous to the people of Israel."

Netanyahu is polling poorly, but the wily operator retains a committed nucleus of right-wing support and enormous influence. Coalition partner Gantz appears next in line to succeed his "frenemy."

"Until we have an election, and I don't know when an election will take place, nobody knows what will happen," Tibi said. "Netanyahu will fight for his political survival."

The Gaza campaign is open-ended, and a full-scale war with the Lebanese Hezbollah movement along the northern border is looming. Netanyahu critics have repeatedly said the prime minister might look to use the war to his political advantage, dragging the conflict out and even expanding it to shore up his position.

"He is," Tibi said when asked if his rival is already doing so. "He's willing to continue to what he has been calling in recent days 'absolute victory,'" Tibi added. "It's stupid and fascist."

As for Gaza, Tibi said only democratic elections can chart a path forwards. "No one has the right to decide for Palestinians who will govern them," he said. "Why are elections legal in Israel and the United States, and it is not in Palestine?"

Asked if Hamas should be allowed to stand in a future contest, Tibi replied that "all factions" should unite under the banner of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the coalition internationally recognized as representing the Palestinian people. Led by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO does not currently include Hamas under its umbrella.

"I think then the Palestinians can accept that unity after the war," Tibi said, noting an expanded and revitalized PLO will need international support to "treat and relieve this huge pain in Gaza."

The PLO, the PA and its dominant Fatah faction are all widely considered corrupt and neutered. It is unclear if the aging Abbas can guide it back to relevance in Gaza, from which it was ejected in Hamas' 2007 coup. The absence of a clear Gaza policy is as present on the Palestinian side as on the Israeli.

"The people of Gaza and the people of the West Bank are very critical of all factions, and they are right in this criticism," Tibi said. " All these factions should do very much in order to rebuild confidence with the Palestinian people.

"The Palestinian people are much more important than the Palestinian factions."