Biden feels ‘overwhelming frustration’ with Israel

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden has acknowledged “overwhelming frustration” with Israel’s government, saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration has led Israel in the wrong direction.

Biden’s speech to the advocacy group J Street on Monday was an unusually sharp rebuke of America’s closest ally in the Middle East.

The vice president offered a grim outlook for Mideast peace efforts, reflecting dim hopes for progress during the remainder of the Obama administration. Although he said Israelis and Palestinians shared blame for undermining trust and shirking responsibility, he was emphatic in his critique of Netanyahu’s government, suggesting his approach raised “profound questions” about how Israel could remain both Jewish and democratic.

“I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years — the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures — they’re moving us and more importantly they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction,” Biden said.

He said those policies were moving Israel toward a “one-state reality” — meaning a single state for Palestinians and Israelis in which, eventually, Israeli Jews will no longer be the majority.

“That reality is dangerous,” Biden added.

Biden, who met in March with both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said he came away from that trip discouraged about prospects for peace anytime soon. Still, he said the U.S. is obliged to guarantee Israel’s security and to “push them as hard as we can” toward a two-state solution despite “our sometimes overwhelming frustration with the Israeli government.”

“There is at the moment no political will that I observed from either Israelis or Palestinians to go forward with serious negotiations,” Biden said.

The vice president’s remarks to J Street, a dovish Israel advocacy group that frequently criticizes Netanyahu, came at the height of a U.S. campaign season in which candidates have been scrutinized over their adherence to traditionally stalwart U.S. support for Israel.