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00:00 First of all, tell us about this letter that's growing in number from Democrats
00:04 calling on President Biden to halt arms sales to Israel.
00:09 Well, Joe Biden has been coming under a lot of pressure in recent months from Democrats on Capitol Hill
00:16 to condition aid to Israel, to try to use some leverage over Israel.
00:21 This idea of leverage is something that the White House's National Security Council has pushed back on many times,
00:26 but nevertheless, Democrats feel like Joe Biden needs to use his position with Israel
00:31 in order to ensure that civilian lives in Gaza are protected.
00:35 Now, this started in the Senate.
00:37 We've heard these calls from various people, including progressive senators such as Elizabeth Warren.
00:43 But now these calls in the wake of this attack and the strike on these aid workers on Monday have started to morph.
00:51 And we are now seeing that these calls are coming from other parts of the House, including more House Democrats.
00:56 And they are now calling for an entirety of stopping aid to Israel altogether.
01:02 Now, the most high-profile person that signed this letter on Friday was Nancy Pelosi.
01:08 She was the former speaker of the House, a close ally to Biden as well.
01:12 And what's really important and interesting here is that the other people who signed onto this
01:17 are the more progressive and far-left, as it were, members of the House.
01:21 So it's no surprise they would call for this.
01:23 But the fact that Nancy Pelosi has signed onto this shows that this really now is starting to gain some mainstream movements
01:31 and momentum within the Democratic Party, and it's something that Joe Biden will no likely hear as some kind of pressure.
01:38 He's also now in a bit of a difficult situation because the Republicans on the right-hand side of the Congress are saying that
01:44 he's abandoning Israel and moving away from Israel.
01:46 Meanwhile, the Democrats are saying that he's not doing enough to protect civilian lives.
01:51 So the White House really finding itself in a bit of a tightrope situation now,
01:54 not just between Israel and the conflict, but also the Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
02:01 What's really interesting, Fraser, is you've got a situation now where I think latest approval ratings of Joe Biden have slipped again since December.
02:08 You know, a lot of the tangible questions to those polled were about his approach to the conflict in Gaza and elections,
02:17 as you know, as we constantly talk about coming up.
02:19 So you have that on one side that's clearly President Biden is minded about.
02:24 But you also have this relationship that was unwavering with Israel at the start of the conflict.
02:29 Now, these conditions in place, how do you judge that relationship between those two leaders right now?
02:38 There seems to have been a bit of a sea change in the wake of this strike on the on these aid workers.
02:44 Now, some pundits are saying that it's deplorable that it's taken over 30,000 lives in Gaza for nothing to happen,
02:53 but then for the lives of seven aid workers, for Western leaders to crystallize their positions on this.
02:59 But it has been growing frustration for months between Netanyahu and Joe Biden.
03:04 It's no secret that the two are not each other's biggest fans and that Netanyahu tends to prefer Republican leaders of the U.S.
03:12 government as opposed to Democratic leaders.
03:15 But they have known each other for a long time.
03:16 But the calls are getting increasingly more fraught and we are getting a bit more color on the call that we heard on saw on Thursday.
03:24 In the wake of the attack on those aid workers, Axios was reporting that Joe Biden said to Netanyahu that if Israel doesn't change its
03:32 course in Gaza and put in place these steps to protect humanitarian aid workers and civilians, that, quote,
03:39 we won't be able to support you. That is a big difference in tone from that we've heard from the beginning of October in the wake of the
03:47 attacks on Israel by Hamas.
03:50 There was no no kind of going into the detail of what that taking away of support would entail, whether that would be those weapons that
03:57 some Democrats are calling for.
03:59 But that is the starkest words that we've heard from Joe Biden about the support that the U.S.
04:05 can give to Israel. And ultimately, it feels at the moment that things are starting to get to a bit of a tipping point.
04:11 And Joe Biden ultimately is saying enough is enough and he can't really stand by anymore.
04:16 That is really interesting, Fraser, especially with Israeli press in the past couple of days, newspapers reporting how angry that phone
04:22 call was, the one that's led to Ashdod crossing opening the container port there and also the Arres crossing, which was badly damaged in
04:28 those October the 7th attacks.
04:29 Fraser, great to talk to you.
04:31 Fraser Jackson, our correspondent in Washington.