Biden’s support for Israel now comes with words of caution
Three days after Hamas terrorists massacred more than 1,400 people, President Biden offered support to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of the Israeli leader’s vow to “avenge this black day” and destroy Hamas’ hideouts from the air “in a ruin’ and on the ground.
“I told him that if the United States were to experience what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive and overwhelming,” Mr. Biden recalled during a phone call between the two leaders on Oct. 10.
But the president’s message, emphatically joining the mourning that has swept through Israel, has changed dramatically in the past three weeks. While he continues to express unequivocal support for Israel, Mr. Biden and his top military and diplomatic officials have become more critical of Israel’s response to the terrorist attacks and the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
The president and his senior aides are still clinging to the hope that the new war between Israel and Hamas will eventually give way to a resumption of talks on the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and could even provide some leverage for a return to negotiations on a two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine coexist. Mr Netanyahu has long opposed such a move.
“While it may seem more illusory now, we still believe this is the right thing to do for the region, for the world, and certainly for the Palestinian people,” said John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council. on Monday.
But in the short term, U.S. officials have become more strident in reminding Israelis that even if Hamas terrorists deliberately mingle with civilians, operations must be tailored to avoid nonmilitary casualties. Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at the United Nations that “Humanitarian pauses must be taken into account”, a move that Israel has rejected.
“While Israel has the right — and even the obligation — to defend itself, how it does so matters,” Mr. Blinken said, adding that “it means that food, water, medicine and other essential humanitarian aid should be able to flow abroad. Gaza and for the people who need them.”
On Sunday, just a day after Israeli military leaders said Hamas terrorists were using a Gaza hospital as a command center, Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, was more blunt. Mr. Sullivan said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields “creates an additional burden on the Israeli military.”
He added: “This is something we talk to Israelis about every day.” He then noted that hospitals were not legitimate military targets, just as Israel warned that another major hospital in Gaza had to be emptied before the next round of bombing.
Administration officials said the shift in tone and content was the result of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where more than 8,000 people have been killed, according to the Health Ministry, sparking outrage in the United States and around the world.