Joining me now is Farid Zaharia. He's the host of Farid Zaharia, GPS. Farid, great to have you on tonight. Can you put this into perspective for us? How important is this for the US-Israeli relationship?

I think it's a watershed. Senator Schumer is not somebody who is likely to freelance. As you point out, he's the most senior Jewish-American official in the United States. He's also very close to President Biden and to Biden's team. I suspect that there was some consultation here. And what it reflects, I think, is a very deep frustration that the Biden administration has had with the Netanyahu government. They have provided really unqualified support on a scale that is unprecedented. In Israel, Joe Biden is wildly popular for the extraordinary and unqualified support he gave. But in In return, he has tried to counsel the Netanyahu government to be proportionate, not to launch a major ground invasion, not to level 50% of the buildings in Gaza, not to do in the south what they did in the north. At every turn, the Netanyahu government has defied and disagreed and gone on and done whatever it wanted. I think this comes after a very long period, months of the Biden administration administration patiently and quietly counseling the Israeli government to take a different course and recognize that they were paying an enormous price internationally, and the United States is paying an enormous price because, as IDF generals point out repeatedly, without American support, none of these operations would be possible.

I think this may be the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, but it comes after months of frustration.

I wonder what the import of it is at the end of the day. I mean, as you pointed out, Netanyahu has basically been ignoring the Biden administration on all of their lines drawn in the sand, on all of the things that they put on the table and said, Do not do this. What are they going to do now?

It's a very good question. They don't have those many choices. This is, after all, a senator who is expressing an opinion, and he's not calling, as some people have said, for the overthrow of the regime or anything like that. He's simply saying, Israel faces a completely new security situation, and they should have new elections. That's his opinion. He's not the administration, he's the legislative branch. At this point, the administration has to ask, Is it going to do something? What could it do? President Biden could make a speech in which he focuses on Israeli policies and where they should go and where they're going wrong. The The United States has vetoed almost every call for a ceasefire in the United Nations. It's been often the lone vote supporting Israel. It could change that. It could also condition the aid that it gives the military aid and say these weapons cannot be used, for example, in any further offensive, such as an invasion of Rafe. So it does have various tools at its hand. I think this was a way of trying to signal their displeasure without the administration formally escalating along the lines I was describing.

A warning of sorts, perhaps. I wonder, though, look, the fate of Netanyahu, when this war ends, it seems based on polling inside of Israel, he would not remain in power. So what happens next? Is there any coalition government that Do you see waiting in the wings that is capable of bringing this war to an end and moving Israel and Gaza and the West Bank into a future that actually leads to peace?

Oh, absolutely. Israel has many very seasoned political leaders who have views different from Netanyahu. Many of them have served in the military in senior positions, which Bibi Netanyahu has not. No, Israel is full of political talent. The question is, as you say, right now, there is, as far as we can tell from the polling, a deep dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I think that some polls I've seen up to 70% of the people think he should not be Prime Minister after the war is over. In a way, Schumann was reflecting that feeling. There are certainly people in Israel who believe that they can find a more lasting way to achieve a security for Israel than a endless and intense ground operation that levels more and more of Gaza, more and more civilian casualties. There are people out there saying that for sure.