On May 8, President Joe Biden made an unusual public statement, giving a clear indication that the weight of electoral politics is influencing his Israel policy. As Israel mulls a full-scale offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Biden said he would stop sending bombs and other munitions to Israel if it went ahead with the invasion. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah—they haven’t gone in Rafah yet—if they go, I am not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah,” said Biden.
On the same day, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told a senate committee that the US had formally asked Israel not to launch a major offensive against Rafah. “Israel should not launch a major attack without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in the battle space,” he said. He informed the committee that the Biden administration had already put on hold a shipment of high-payload munitions to Israel, keeping in mind possible ground operations in Rafah. The paused shipment include 1,800 bombs weighing 2,000 pounds each and 1,700 bombs weighing 500 pounds each. The state department is considering whether to give Israel 6,500 Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kits that could convert ordinary bombs to precision-guided weapons.
Biden, meanwhile, acknowledged for the first time that Israel used American weapons to kill civilians. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” said Biden, referring to weapons supplied by the US.
The Biden administration has already warned Israel that a full-blown invasion of Rafah would be a red-line that could hurt bilateral relations. But the government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is driven by far right leaders whose support is crucial for the government's stability. And they believe that a major assault on Rafah is required to dismantle four of Hamas's six remaining battalions. Humanitarian workers worry that it would lead to massive collateral damage as nearly 1.5 million people have taken refuge in Rafah.
Israeli forces seized the main border crossing from Gaza to Egypt on May 7, sealing off a critical access point to deliver much-needed aid to the embattled enclave. It conducted airstrikes, sent in battle tanks and has ordered the immediate evacuation of 110,000 civilians. The immediate provocation behind the latest Israeli action was a series of rocket attacks by Hamas on the Kerem Shalom crossing in which four Israeli soldiers were killed. “We are conducting a limited operation in Gaza to kill terrorists and dismantle the infrastructure being used by Hamas terrorists,” said an Israeli military spokesperson. He asked civilians in Rafah to move to an expanded humanitarian zone near Khan Younis, located to the north of Rafah. So far, the Israeli manoeuvre appears limited in scope, and does not look like a full scale invasion.
As Netanyahu refuses to budge, aid, especially military supplies, is the key leverage for Biden. The US has provided Israel aid worth $158.7 billion since the Jewish state was formed in May 1948—of that, $124.3 billion has been for the military. At present, the annual aid outlay is $3.8 billion, according to a deal signed by president Barack Obama. An additional $15 billion was approved by the Biden administration a week ago under a bill passed by the Congress.
US presidents have employed their leverage over Israel only rarely. The last president to do so was Ronald Regan, who delayed the supply of arms to Israel back in 1980s to demonstrate his displeasure on the invasion of Lebanon and the attack on Iraqi nuclear reactors. A few years later, president George H.W. Bush temporarily froze loan guarantees worth $10 billion when he found out that the money was being used to expand settlements in the West Bank. He also wanted to nudge the Israelis to come to the negotiating table with the Palestinians to launch a peace process.
Yet, in the case of Biden, the break with Israel, especially with Netanyahu, appears deep. With Netanyahu's steady shift to the far right, his ties with the US, especially with Democratic administrations, have soured considerably. During the ongoing Gaza war, Netanyahu has been completely oblivious to suggestions from the Biden administration about minimising civilian casualties and exploring the possibilities of a ceasefire.
The differences in opinion have become all the more pronounced regarding the future of Rafah. While Netanyahu insists on a ground invasion, Biden has repeatedly made clear his opposition to that. Biden has dispatched CIA director William Burns to the Middle East to broker peace between the warring parties. Burns met with Netanyahu two days ago to personally convey Biden's warning that Israel needed to spare Rafah to ensure continued American support.
The Burns-Netanyahu meeting on May 8 happened against the backdrop of truce negotiations in Cairo during which Hamas announced that it had accepted a ceasefire and hostage deal proposed by Egypt and Qatar. While Israel has sent a delegation to Cairo, it is unlikely to accede to the demands by Hamas, especially the condition of a “path to sustainable calm”. Hamas means a permanent end to the war, complete withdrawal from Gaza and lifting the blockade. Netanyahu said those were quite far away from Israel's core concerns and that he intended to keep up the military pressure.
For Biden, time is running out as he enters the home stretch of his reelection campaign. Adopting a sterner position against Netanyahu is an acknowledgment of the fact that the wider Democratic coalition does not want to give Israel a free pass. The progressive wing of the party keeps on reminding Biden that the war has already caused more than 34,000 deaths, of which a majority are civilians. “Over the years, the US has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. We can no longer be complicit in Netanyahu's horrific war against the Palestinian people,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont, after Biden announced his plan to withhold aid.
Biden has so far been reluctant in adopting a tough position against Israel as conventional wisdom suggests that no candidate can expect to win the presidency by alienating the Jewish state and the overwhelming support it enjoys in the United States. But the ongoing Gaza war seems to have shifted that narrative, at least to a limited extent, as seen from the campus protests and also from various opinion polls.
The Republicans, meanwhile, offer full-throttled support for Israel. They have criticised Biden for threatening to suspend aid. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote a joint letter to Biden, asking him to rethink. “Israel faces an existential and multi-front threat... and daylight between Israel and the US at this dangerous time risks emboldening Israel's enemies and undermining the trust that other allies and partners have in the US,” they said. Speaking in the senate, McConnell said Biden's move was influenced by “political pressure from his party's anti-Israel base and the campus communists who decided to wrap themselves in the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Unless Biden can persuade Netanyahu to cut a deal with Hamas and achieve at least a temporary truce, Gaza could easily be a disaster for him this election cycle. Disruptions during his public meetings and the unending campus protests are already hurting his campaign. The president will have to walk a fine line balancing criticisms about anti-Semitism, while at the same time addressing the concerns of the young voters and also the Arab and Muslim supporters of the Democratic Party to maintain his edge in the battleground states and retain the White House in November.
