Biden Edges toward Abandoning Israel at His Own Risk

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

 

At what should have been the close of Joe Biden’s impromptu press conference last week, in which the president oddly sought to allay concerns about his advanced age by displaying all the traits classically associated with dotage, the president shuffled back to the lectern to allow himself one last dig at Israel.

 

The Jewish state’s defensive war against Hamas in Gaza was “over the top,” Biden said. “I’m pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage ceasefire,” he continued, adding that he hoped a temporary cease-fire might lead to a “sustained pause in the fighting.” If he could secure a brief cessation in the hostilities, “I think that we would be able to extend that so that we could increase the prospect that this fighting in Gaza changes,” the president said.

 

The chances of that outcome probably declined with the president’s admission. Biden’s concession that a deal to release some of the hostages still alive and in Hamas’s custody would be used as leverage against Israel to prevent it from pursuing its prime directive in this war — the neutralization of Hamas as a terrorist threat — surely makes Israel’s cooperation less likely.

 

This was not just an errant thought. In a press conference alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Monday, Biden restated his desire to see Israel stand down. “Our military operation in Rafah—” Biden paused, collected himself, and continued: “the major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan — a credible plan — for ensuring the safety and support of [the] more than one million people sheltering there,” he said. “They need to be protected.” The president restated his desire to seek a deal that would lead to an “immediate and sustained period of calm to Gaza for at least six weeks,” in which time negotiators could “build something more enduring.”

 

Biden might think he’s articulating a view shared by most of his countrymen. A recent AP-NORC poll found that half of all American adults now believe “Israel’s military offensive has gone beyond what it should have.” But Biden risks much if he overinvests in that emerging consensus. As Nicholas Grossman wrote for the Daily Beast, the polling does not show that Americans do not favor an outcome of this war that leaves Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip or holds U.S. aid hostage in the effort to force Israel to abandon its objectives. The public is of two minds on this war, so it’s on Biden to make up his own.

 

Israel isn’t waiting around. As Phil Klein detailed yesterday, Israel on Sunday executed a raid in the city of Rafah and secured the release of two hostages held in Hamas’s custody since October 7. The audacious and successful mission hasn’t generated much enthusiasm from administration officials, however. The White House and its agencies seem far more concerned with the early evidence of Israel’s intention to do exactly what it said it would do from the outset of this war — eradicate Hamas in all its strongholds.

 

The Biden administration has made its opposition to any displacement of the Palestinian people in Rafah clear. At the same time, the White House also insists that Israel commit to efforts at scale to protect Gaza’s population from the fighting. These two objectives are in conflict. One proposal Israel shared with Egypt would create refugee camps inside Gaza replete with humanitarian services designed to temporarily shelter evacuees — a plan that must be executed amid Hamas’s resistance, as it seeks to preserve as many human shields as it can. This was apparently unacceptable to the president.

 

An exchange between Biden and Netanyahu this weekend reportedly “grew tense” as Biden pressed for his counterpart to observe restraint. “The U.S. has made it clear that it won’t under any circumstances support a plan for such an invasion and that it would prefer to see targeted operations,” one unnamed U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal. “He just feels like this is enough,” another figure close to Biden said of the president’s outlook toward Israel’s war in comments provided to NBC News. “It has to stop.”

 

Of course, the president is engaged in a balancing act. The interests not just of his domestic constituents who gravitate toward the Democratic coalition and despise Israel’s conduct weigh heavily on him, but so, too, do the concerns of Arab states like Egypt and Jordan. Their populations are not nearly as keen on preserving peaceful relations with Jerusalem as those regimes themselves, and a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza threatens their stability. But politics happens in Israel, too. And in Israel, there is no daylight between Netanyahu’s government and his opponents, both inside his coalition and outside it, on the overall objective of this war. In deference to the overwhelming demand of the Israeli people, Israel will see Hamas destroyed.

 

By showing his cards as he has, the president has sacrificed some of the influence over Israel his government should covet. By advertising a cease-fire deal as a Trojan horse — a ruse designed to box Israel in and present it with facts on the ground that it must simply accept — Biden has lost some ability to pursue that outcome. If Biden believes Israel’s war “has to stop” before it has achieved its objectives, Israel — with profound trepidation and regret over the conditions Biden’s White House imposed on them — will simply ignore the president.

 

Biden’s balancing act is falling apart. In observance of his obligations to Israel’s critics, he’s losing sight of his obligations to civilization itself. Israel’s war is righteous. It is a service to immediate U.S. interests. And it’s going to proceed whether Biden likes it or not. He should recalibrate his posture, and soon. In this administration’s frantic effort to ingratiate itself among Jerusalem’s detractors, Biden risks activating the far larger host arrayed on the side of Israel. If the president is aware of that risk, he’s not acting like it.