Biden’s strategy is being tested as Israeli forces push into southern Gaza

For two months, President Biden has strongly supported Israel’s right to defend itself after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, in effect ceding Jerusalem’s credibility to moderate its response. But with Israeli troops pushing into southern Gaza, the question is when Mr. Biden’s account will be emptied and the checks will start to bounce.

Administration officials insist that the president’s approach has and continues to meaningfully influence Israel’s actions in recent weeks. But the late-night phone calls between Washington and Jerusalem have become increasingly charged and public messages from some top administration officials have sharpened in recent days.

The friction became apparent on Tuesday when the State Department imposed a visa ban on Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have committed violence against Palestinians, a rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not doing more to stop such attacks far from the action in Gaza. At the same time, Mr. Netanyahu, despite Washington’s warnings, said the Israeli army would maintain security control of Gaza long after Hamas was defeated.

The stakes are high for both parties. Netanyahu’s Israel needs the Biden administration’s support to continue supplying its armed forces and shielding it from international pressure from other quarters, including the United Nations. Mr. Biden, in turn, has become so closely allied with Israel that he effectively owns its military operation and has absorbed scathing political attacks, especially from the left wing of his own party, which has accused him of enabling mass slaughter of civilians made.

“The real question is: How do you let a sovereign nation like Israel, on the one hand, go after terrorist targets, while on the other hand, let them do so in a way that minimizes harm to civilians?” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters this week. “And that’s really where the rubber meets the road in all of this.”

For now, Mr. Biden has left it to his underlings to deliver the tougher messages publicly. In recent days, Vice President Kamala Harris declared that “Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians” and sent her own national security adviser to Israel to convey the concerns of Arab leaders she met during a trip to Dubai.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said it was imperative for the United States that “the enormous loss of civilian life and displacement on the scale we saw in northern Gaza will not be repeated in the south ” and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III warned Israel that “if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

However, Biden himself has measured his words and said little about Israel’s military assault on southern Gaza since it began a few days ago. At a campaign fundraiser in Boston on Tuesday, he focused again on the atrocities committed by Hamas, as Hamas killed 1,200 people and seized another 240 hostages.

“In recent weeks, survivors and witnesses of the attacks have shared the horrific stories of unimaginable atrocities,” Mr. Biden told donors. “Reports of women being raped – repeatedly raped – and their bodies mutilated while they were still alive – of female corpses being violated, Hamas terrorists inflicting as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible and then killing them. It’s terrible.”

He added that “the world cannot simply look away” and “must strongly condemn without hesitation the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas terrorists.” Mr. Sullivan and John F. Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, have also emphasized Hamas’s culpability and support for Israel’s response in recent days, while urging care for civilians.

The disparity to some extent reflects traditional good-cop-bad-cop diplomacy, where a president leaves it to others to draw a harder line while remaining more distant. Aides argue that “there is no daylight,” as Mr. Sullivan put it, between the president and his team, even if their emphasis sounds different. Privately, aides said, Mr. Biden has been as forceful with Mr. Netanyahu as his vice president and Cabinet secretaries.

“The president wants to avoid criticizing Bibi publicly as much as possible,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former special envoy to the Middle East, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. “But for Vice President Harris to speak out so clearly is the closest we can get: one degree of separation.” He said the same thing, with Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin.

“I view it as a very carefully calibrated public campaign, necessitated by their concern that the message is not getting through privately,” added Mr. Indyk, who worked with Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken in President Barack Obama’s administration. “I can’t remember a time when so many senior officials spoke out together with such a clear warning to Israel.”

Critics of Mr. Biden’s embrace of Israel were unimpressed, suggesting he was giving his team the power to publicly rebuke Israel without actually doing anything to stop the war.

“The Biden administration is trying to have its cake and eat it too,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, an advocacy group. “It seeks to respond to growing public demands to rein in Israeli atrocities, while meeting donor demands for unconditional military support for Israel. Ultimately, Israelis will only pay attention to what the Biden administration actually does, not just what it says.”

On the other side of the political spectrum, some conservatives accused Mr. Biden of undermining his own outspoken support for Israel.

“Until a week ago, the Biden administration was quite solid in its support of Israel’s stated goal of destroying Hamas,” said Enia Krivine, an Israel specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The government gave Israel about eight weeks of time and space and is now beginning to set conditions for continued support.”

She added that Israel wants to “keep the US on its side for as long as possible” but may find it impossible to fully respond to the Biden administration’s calls and that “Jerusalem may ultimately have to choose between appeasing of Washington and fully achieving the Administration’s objectives. the war.”

Mr. Biden has made a point of calling Mr. Netanyahu regularly and continues to send a parade of officials to meet the prime minister and his officials. Philip H. Gordon, the vice president’s national security adviser, was in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to convey the concerns of the Arab leaders Ms. Harris met in Dubai and their insistence on an eventual political path to Palestinian self-rule.

Mr. Gordon focused on the “day-after” questions about what will happen in Gaza once Israel completes its war against Hamas. After meetings with Israeli officials, Mr. Gordon was expected to go to Ramallah on Wednesday to hold talks with leaders of the Palestinian Authority, which partly governs the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority opposes Israeli settlements and compensates the families of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including those held for violent attacks, but, unlike Hamas, recognizes Israel’s right to exist and has coordinated to some extent with Israeli security forces .

Mr Biden and Mr Netanyahu disagree on the next day’s question. While Mr. Biden agrees that Hamas should be removed from power in Gaza, he opposes an Israeli reoccupation of the coastal enclave. Instead, he favors what he calls a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority that would also take over Gaza. But Netanyahu has pushed back against that, saying Tuesday that only Israel can ensure Gaza remains demilitarized after Hamas is destroyed. “I am not ready to close my eyes and accept any other arrangement,” he said.

For all their disagreements, Biden administration officials say the president’s strategy has paid off. By keeping Israel close, they said, he helped prevent Israel from expanding the war by going after Hezbollah in Lebanon; forced Israel to reopen Gaza to humanitarian aid after initially vowing to block all food, water and other supplies; encouraged the now-expired lull in fighting that allowed the release of more than 100 hostages; and has prompted Israel to take more steps to limit civilian casualties.

As Israeli forces push into southern Gaza, they have published maps of safe zones where civilians can take shelter from the fighting and, according to U.S. officials, have tried to tailor their targets to avoid as many mass casualty attacks as possible. Nevertheless, Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that there have been hundreds murdered in recent days, and critics have scorned the maps as ineffective in an area with so little mass communication. Privately, Biden administration officials acknowledged that the Israelis have not done as much as Washington would like to spare citizens, but said they got the message and are trying.

“Israel has heard loud and clear our expectation that they will uphold international humanitarian law, adhere to the rules of war and take steps to minimize civilian casualties as they pursue this war against Hamas,” said Olivia Dalton . a White House spokeswoman told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday as Mr Biden traveled to Boston.

As the war rages on, the clock is ticking, and White House officials acknowledge there may be a limit to how long they can maintain public alignment with Israel.

“I think the US policy has a shelf life of four to six weeks,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, who just returned from a trip to the region. “If this war continues in January, dissent within the Democratic Party and strong international pressure will likely lead Biden to pressure Israel to scale back military operations.”