The chaos engulfing Israel’s political system and policy apparatus was in full force this week in unprecedented fashion. On the heels of Defense Minister Yoav Galant’s direct challenge to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s lack of a Gaza day-after plan and his warning that he would not support an Israeli military or civil administration in the territory, Benny Gantz chimed in with his own ultimatum. Gantz laid out six strategic questions to which he says Netanyahu has not yet provided answers, and threatened to pull out of the emergency government by June 8 if Netanyahu does not provide clarity. IDF casualties in Gaza continued their recent alarming rise, as the IDF engaged in intense firefights in northern Gaza neighborhoods in scenes reminiscent of November. The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor applied for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Galant, a genuinely jarring move that appeared to take the Israeli government by surprise. The walls seem to be crumbling around Israel, and plans to get Israel out of the morass are few and far between.

Amidst this, Jake Sullivan traveled to Saudi Arabia and then to Israel in the latest administration push to get a grand bargain that will deliver a U.S.-Saudi treaty and normalization between Jerusalem and Riyadh. President Joe Biden appears to still be determined to leave no stone unturned in his effort to solve various regional problems in one fell swoop, and the type of deal he envisions would theoretically bring the fighting in Gaza to a close, return Israeli hostages back home, stop Hizballah rocket fire to allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north, solidify the regional coalition containing Iran, unlock Sunni support for Gaza reconstruction and administration, and move Israel and the Palestinians back toward a two-state horizon. The gamble is worth it in light of the myriad potential benefits, but it is also the longest of long shots. Netanyahu is not going to do anything to risk Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir’s support, and almost everything he would be required to do in order to move this deal forward—whether pausing the fighting, granting a Palestinian Authority role in Gaza, or saying something even minimally encouraging about a path toward Palestinian statehood—will violate their red lines. To put things bluntly, Biden is wasting his time trying to move Netanyahu on anything, which makes his larger vision impossible to pull off in the time frame he wants.

Biden should stop waiting for Netanyahu to come around, since it is an exercise in futility. If this larger vision is to be realized, it will require putting the choice before the Israeli people in the starkest of ways. Behind one door is what Biden is asking, which carries all of the benefits laid out above and also an end to daily IDF casualties in Gaza—particularly if it comes together following Israel’s operation in Rafah, which has already begun—and massive pressure on the ICC to reject Karim Khan’s application for arrest warrants. Behind a second door is Netanyahu not diverting from the path he is on, which means continued Israeli quagmire, no mythical Arab coalition running Gaza that he (and Gantz) keep insinuating exists, even more friction with the U.S., even more Israeli isolation, and the next round of ICC warrants that begin to target Israelis much farther afield of its top two officials. Israelis need to hear directly that these are the two choices, and that if they want door number one, they cannot continue to ignore that they have one foot already through the threshold of door number two.

It is not Biden, however, who should make this argument. It is Mohammed bin Salman. Netanyahu wants Biden’s full-court press, because it will give him the only potent political argument he has left. He will paint Biden as trying to ram Palestinian statehood down Israelis’ throats following the worst Palestinian terrorism in the country’s history, accuse Gantz of not being able to stand up to Biden, and claim that only he can stop the impending disaster. Netanyahu will ensure that the Israeli political conversation moves away from his own failures and focuses almost entirely on the alleged threat to Israeli security and to Zionism by playing on Israeli fears of the consequences of a Palestinian state with October 7 still dominating the national consciousness.

That argument will be harder to pull off if it is MBS making the appeal to Israelis. The most impactful diplomatic move in recent Israeli history was Emirati Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba’s op-ed in Yediot Ahronot laying out the direct choice that Israelis were facing: West Bank annexation, or the normalization agreement with the UAE that shortly after became the Abraham Accords. Israelis were receptive to this direct Emirati appeal in a way that entreaties from other figures could not accomplish, and it forced Netanyahu’s hand. Direct engagement on this issue from MBS would be even more impactful, and even Netanyahu would have a hard time brushing it off or portraying it as an existential threat. It would still probably not be enough to turn Israeli policy around on the timetable that Biden is dealing with, but it would force a shift in direction that will eventually pay dividends. Israelis pin large hopes on normalization with Saudi Arabia for all sorts of things, from the short-term imperatives of actually obtaining help from the region with Gaza and continuing to neutralize Iranian missiles and drones, to the long-term imperatives of expanding regional economic opportunities and isolating states that continue to hold out on normalizing with Israel. Biden can promise that these things will materialize, but aside from standing in as a convenient Netanyahu punching bag, it also does not land with the same directness for Israelis if the Saudis are not the ones saying it. MBS must be the one to make this case for it to work.

The Saudis’ focus in this arrangement is not Israel, but the U.S. The defense pact, arms sales, and nuclear green light they want is from Washington, and the fact that they are asking for their stretch wish list gives Biden a fair amount of leverage, even while the Saudis know that Biden is trying to cement them in the American orbit rather than the Chinese one. Asking MBS to do the heavy public lifting on appealing to Israeli sensibilities should be at the top of American officials’ agendas, even if there is not enough time left on the U.S. political calendar to have a new Israeli government in place that would be willing to engage on the necessary Israeli moves to solve the rest of the puzzle. A U.S.-Saudi-Israel agreement is probably not achievable before the end of Biden’s current term, but he can get the process moving—and make it much more likely in his next term, should he win in November—if he can persuade MBS to clarify for Israelis the choice that is before them. As the Israeli chaos continues to pile up, Israelis may be more receptive than they have been for months to that message from the right messenger.