It doesn't seem to matter what Joe Biden says to Netanyahu

I've lost count of the number of times Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, and others from the US administration and also different leaders in Europe, have rung Binyamin Netanyahu and appealed to him to give up the idea of invading Rafah, the remaining stronghold of Hamas in southern Gaza. The Israeli prime minister is going to ignore all of them. For two reasons. First, he said from the very beginning that he planned to destroy the Hamas organisation so that it could never agan either rule Gaza or threaten Israel like it did on October 7, and that meant seeking out and annihilating the remaining Hamas combat brigades and, most importantly, the top hierarchy of the organisation, all of whom are supposedly underground in and around Rafah. Second, if he doesn't invade Rafah, then he will lose the political support of the most extreme right-wing members of his coalition cabinet and he will be out of a job. Netanyahu has three objectives: to kill every member of Hamas, to release all the hostages (about 130 left) and to survive as prime minister. All of these objectives are inextricably linked. If he fails with one he will probably fail with the other two. So that's why he remains rigidly focused on his objectives and why he is not listening to Biden/Blinken etc. Biden has said he thinks Netanyahu's whole approach to the war in Gaza has been mistaken. But you have to ask, what was the alternative from the very beginning? Not invade Gaza at all? Leave Hamas in charge and thus, able, to carry out further attacks on Israel? Put off revenge and try for an international diplomatic solution to free the hostages? Let Hamas get away with killing 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping 250 more? None of thse alternatives would have satisfied the Israeli people, let alone the fiery right-wingers in his cabinet. But I guess what Biden meant was that Israel should have sent special forces and Mossad into Gaza to find and capture/kill the Hamas leaders responsible for the October 7 massacre, and free the hostages, but NOT invade Gaza with thousands of troops and bomb every city to rubble. But then how successful would Israel's special forces have been without the back-up of combat battalions to protect them? The problem is that Netanyahu and his military commanders went for the shock-and-awe option which was to pulverise anything that appeared to be hiding Hamas fighters and/or infrastructure, and because Hamas was using the civilian population as human shields, that meant pretty well everything, from hospitals to mosques to apartment buildings, was targeted which is why the images from Gaza are all of totally destroyed towns and cities. That, I agree with Biden, was a huge mistake because now these images, as well as the warnings of mass starvation, have alienatated the rest of the world. But Netanyahu is still not listening. He has set a date for the invasion of Rafah and I guess he will not change his mind.