Biden’s decades of support for Israel helps him push for desired war conduct
Mike Brest
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President Joe Biden’s decades of support for Israel has provided him with the leeway to push his vision for its war in Gaza when Tel Aviv deviates too far away from it.
Biden, who spent over 25 years in the Senate before winning the vice presidency twice and subsequently the presidency, has largely resisted international and domestic pressure to demand an end to Israel’s war in Gaza, though his administration has repeatedly encouraged Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.
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The president has “withstood tremendous pressure from within his own party, within his own administration, from the international community, tremendous pressure, and … he’s continuing to veto U.N. resolutions,” former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, who served during the Obama administration, told the Washington Examiner. “He’s continuing to supply us with vital ammunition.”
The United Nations Security Council has delayed a vote on a Gaza resolution multiple times this month due to a disagreement on the text of the resolution that would call for the international community to provide additional humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in need. The U.S. has indicated its intent to veto any resolution that it feels is one-sided, favoring the Palestinians.
“When President Biden wants to get Israel to open up humanitarian corridors or increase the aid or even the flow of fuel into Gaza, Israel is hard-pressed to say no. That probably wouldn’t have been the case with Barack Obama,” Oren explained.
U.S. officials have begun urging Israeli military leaders to end the high-intensity operations phase of their invasion and instead focus on precise and deliberate attacks against Hamas officials, but doing so puts Israeli forces asked to carry out those operations at greater risk. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant acknowledged that “circumstances are changing” in the war on Dec. 18.
“We have seen [the Israelis] act on those messages in terms of the scope and scale of the ground force that they used to go into north Gaza, much reduced than what they had originally planned,” National Security Council coordinator John Kirby said earlier in December. “We saw them beginning to rely less on airstrikes. And because they’ve got troops inserted, and when you have troops inserted on the ground, you are able to target in a more precise way, you also take a higher risk to your forces.”
The strategy the U.S. wants would be “a little bit slower, but it is a more deliberate, more, I think, thoughtful process in how you try to move through this very dense urban terrain and try to do the very best to protect the civilians. Again, even that’s not perfect,” retired U.S. Central Command Cmdr. Joseph Votel told the Washington Examiner. He described the U.S.’s desired strategy as a “high-value individual targeting campaign where they actually just go after Hamas.”
More precise operations would require Israeli forces to go building by building in some of Gaza’s densest areas to clear them while factoring in the threat posed by Hamas’s underground tunnel infrastructure, according to Votel, who has experience in urban combat in Iraq.
Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have had a relationship for a long time, though both have admitted to some disagreements since the war began.
“I think he has to change, and with this government, this government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move,” Biden said earlier this month, and he warned that Israel is “starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.” The two leaders also disagree on who should govern Gaza once the war is over. The U.S. has repeatedly said it wants a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, which leads the West Bank, to govern Gaza after the war. Netanyahu has vowed to prevent that from happening.
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Despite the differences, the Biden administration has withstood significant condemnation from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, many of whom have urged the president to call for a complete ceasefire. The administration has pushed back on that sentiment, including at the U.N., arguing there will not be peace until Hamas is removed from power in Gaza and demilitarized, given Hamas officials’ calls for repeat attacks in line with the Oct. 7 massacre because they refuse to accept Israel’s statehood and want to harm Jewish people globally.
Oren described the Obama administration’s policy as one in which it “sought to extract concessions from Israel through force, through putting distance and daylight between the United States and Israel,” whereas “Biden has done just the opposite. He’s expressed great love for the state of Israel, commitment to the state of Israel, and that’s given him leverage here that Obama never enjoyed, could never attain.”