US President Joe Biden has had a long and complicated relationship with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — one that has taken an especially intense turn in the year since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, as documented in a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.

The book, War, which is set to be released next week and relies on some anonymous sources, lays bare just how frustrated Biden has become with Netanyahu since the war in Gaza began and Israel has bombarded the enclave, killing more than 40,000 people and displacing most of the more than two million residents there.

Outwardly, Biden has voiced strong support for Israel, sometimes in the face of withering international criticism. He has said that Israel has a right to defend itself, although he has from time to time publicly expressed some of his frustration with Netanyahu.

Privately, the president has reacted far more explosively, sometimes with expletives, to Israel’s moves, as multiple news reports have indicated. Netanyahu and the president last spoke on August 21, according to a White House statement.

Woodward’s book, obtained by The New York Times and other news outlets on Tuesday, adds additional, inside-the-room details to those previous accounts, including direct quotes from Biden speaking with his staff or with the prime minister.

In April, for instance, the president questioned Netanyahu’s conduct in
the war in a phone call,
asking, according to the book, “What’s your
strategy, man?”

When Netanyahu insisted that the Israeli military needed to push deeper into southern Gaza and invade the southern city of Rafah, a key border crossing with Egypt, the president, using Netanyahu’s nickname, dismissed this response.

“Bibi, you’ve got no strategy,” Biden replied, according to Woodward.

In May, Biden halted a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel out of concern that they would be used in the Rafah operation and cause excessive civilian casualties. After Netanyahu proceeded with the invasion of Rafah anyway, Biden told advisers that Netanyahu was a liar, using an obscenity, and added that “18 out of 19 people who work for him” were also liars, the book says.

He questioned Netanyahu’s motivations, saying that “he doesn’t give” a damn about Hamas but gives a damn “only about himself,” although he
used an earthier term
than “damn.”

Biden has also occasionally expressed his irritation with Netanyahu directly with the prime minister as the relationship has frayed.

“Bibi, what the fuck?” the President yelled at Netanyahu in July, the book says, after an Israeli airstrike killed a top Hezbollah military commander, Fuad Shukr, and several civilians in an airstrike near Beirut and an Israeli bomb killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, during a visit to Iran.

“You know the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor,” Biden told him, the book reports.

“This is Haniyeh,” Netanyahu replied, according to the book, “one of the leading terrorists. A terrible guy. We saw an opportunity and took it.”

The New York Times could not independently verify the specific statements reported in Woodward’s upcoming book. As efforts at a cease-fire in Gaza have all but collapsed, the war has reached the one-year mark and conflicts with other Iranian proxy groups like Hezbollah have escalated, threatening to draw Iran directly into the conflict. Biden and Netanyahu are facing a situation not unlike one they have faced in the recent past.

In April, Israel conducted a strike in Syria that killed a top general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Iran responded with a salvo of about 300 ballistic missiles, rockets and drones at Israel.

The US and its allies helped intercept most of the projectiles and, as The New York Times has previously reported, Biden urged Netanyahu not to respond, telling him to “do nothing” and “take the win”. But Israel launched a limited, calibrated strike against Iran in response, and Biden told his advisers he had anticipated as much.

“I know he’s going to do something but the way I limit it is tell him to ‘do nothing,’” he said, according to Woodward. That statement may foretell what lies ahead in the fraught relationship.

Last week, Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in what it said was retaliation for the Israeli assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader; Haniyeh; and a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Biden has warned Israel against striking Iranian nuclear sites, saying any response should be “in proportion”.

But based on the recent past, the President may not expect Netanyahu to take US advice.

New York Times News Service