By Howard Goller and James Mackenzie
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Significant progress was made on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal once the administrations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump began working hand in hand to make the case for urgency, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew told Reuters.
Lew’s 15 months as President Biden’s envoy overlapped with a war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, with a Palestinian Hamas attack on Israel followed by an Israeli assault on Gaza. He spoke on Tuesday before a deal was reached.
Lew, 69, will hand over the ambassador’s role to Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, when Trump returns to the White House on Monday. He gave Reuters interviews in December and on Tuesday to mark the end of his tenure.
A Washington veteran and a Democrat, Lew said the bipartisan U.S. cooperation began right after the Republican Trump’s election as president two months ago. Lew said U.S. national interests were best served by what he called a “warm handoff” and a constructive transition.
“I think a lot of progress has been made. The fact that you have an outgoing and an incoming administration that have worked hand in hand to make the case for urgency, I think, has been noticed by all parties,” Lew said.
Lew credited Biden’s significant time commitment to the deal as his term neared an end and welcomed the engagement of Trump, who had said there would be “hell to pay” unless Hamas freed the hostages before he takes over from Biden on Jan. 20.
“The fact that he (Biden) and the president-elect use different language in this case may create constructive tension because they have the same goal, and he (Trump) has used language that makes people say, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ If we were working at cross-purposes, it would be perhaps a different situation. But we’re not. There’s no daylight between what we’re trying to accomplish,” Lew said.
Despite sharp differences between their bosses that emerged during a bruising year in U.S. politics, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Biden’s envoy Brett McGurk have worked along with mediators from Egypt and Qatar to close a long-elusive ceasefire deal that would include a release of hostages and of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Nominated before Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 by Israel’s count on Oct. 7, 2023, Lew arrived in Jerusalem a few weeks after Israel launched a subsequent Gaza assault in which Palestinian officials say more than 46,000 people have been killed.
Biden’s administration angered many of its own supporters over its backing for Israel in Gaza, where it provided not only weapons and material help but also diplomatic support against accusations of war crimes and genocide from countries opposed to the war. Israel and the United States deny the accusations.
But as Israel’s relentless campaign continued and Palestinian casualties mounted, U.S. unease over Israeli tactics turned to open calls for restraint. Relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were strained to the limit.
Asked if he was satisfied Israel was doing enough to ensure a minimum of civilian deaths in Gaza, Lew said: “You know, we have an awful lot of questions that we’ve asked, some of which have been answered, some of which will take time to answer.”
He said Israeli policies were designed to limit civilian harm but mistakes were made in every war, and Israel at the highest level had reassured the U.S. that if mistakes were made, people would be held accountable.
Lew, who like Biden favors a peace deal envisaging a future Palestinian state next to Israel, was cautious in assessing his relationship with Netanyahu, who steadfastly opposes a Palestinian state.
“I felt very comfortable saying things where I disagree and offering views that I think are in the best interest of how to achieve the shared goal. I don’t know what they say when I leave the room, but nobody’s unpleasant to me. They don’t not invite me back,” Lew said.
AN ELUSIVE SAUDI DEAL
When Lew was approached for the job last year, the expectation had been that he would be working to expand Israel’s Abraham Accords with Arab states to include normalizing ties with major power Saudi Arabia.
With the war underway, the agenda had to be reformulated when he arrived on Nov. 3, 2023, he said, but the focus remained. He said he hoped the U.S. under Trump, who hammered out the Abraham Accords in his first term, would pursue policies that foster normalization.
Saudi normalization will only happen if there is quiet in Gaza and an alternate governing body to Hamas, but to maintain quiet there has to be a path to Israeli security along with Palestinian self-governance and the recognition normally constituted in a state, Lew said.
Lew was ambassador during a period of exceptional cooperation between Israel and its closest ally, but also of extraordinary strain. He said it was hard to understand why Israelis would turn small differences with the U.S. into large ones, because it only undermined Israeli security and strengthened Hamas.
Lew voiced concern over what he called the “on-off switch” in the way Israel relates to the U.S.
“What I have, looking back you know, some real concerns about is the on-off switch: ‘you are a friend; you’re not a friend’ at a moment when the question you’re asking kind of touches a nerve. You don’t stop being a friend when you ask a very hard question,” he said.
He said it was a failure of Israel’s political leadership not to provide its citizens with an ability to grapple with Middle East complexities at a moment of huge emotional trauma.
“What you hear back is, ‘How can you talk about a two-state solution and give Hamas a reward for Oct. 7, and you give Iran a victory?’ And that’s actually pretty easy to answer, because the last thing in the world that either Hamas or Iran want is a two-state solution that takes the conflict and puts it to rest.”
It troubled Lew when some in Israel characterized U.S. opposition to the use of 2,000-pound bombs in densely populated urban areas as an arms embargo when on the same day deliveries of the 2,000-pound bombs stopped, precision-guided missiles were shipped.
Lew said he saw it as America’s role to defend a friend facing dramatic world criticism while holding it accountable to the moral and legal standards the two countries share.
A White House chief of staff and Treasury secretary under Democratic President Barack Obama, Lew said U.S. support for Israel remained overwhelmingly strong but it was important for Israel to maintain bipartisan U.S. support.
Lew said this was all the more important at a time when Israeli policies have raised strong concerns among what he described as a relatively small part of the Democratic Party and a strong isolationist movement is forming among Republicans.
(Reporting by Howard Goller and James Mackenzie; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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