Netanyahu Resists Biden's Gaza War Management
Israeli leader shifts focus to his political survival. US President doing the same?
The United States and Israel, allies in the Gaza war in its third bloody month, have yet been unable to agree on the conduct of the conflict and ultimate goal of victory over Hamas, the antagonist.
The incapability to reach accords on these subjects not only reflect different perceptions of short-term tactical needs and longer-term strategic goals that also underscore competing political needs of the two countries’ two leaders.
US President Joe Biden, who is campaigning for reelection in a vote that is 11 months away, wants to demonstrate policy command that is both resolute care both for Israel’s security and concern for Palestinian civilian safety. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under fire for failing to foresee the vicious October 7 Hamas invasion and thus protect Jewish lives, is laboring to satisfy public demands for retribution, thirst for total victory and rescue of captive hostages.
So far, Netanyahu’s desires seem to be outweighing Biden’s priorities. He is taking every opportunity to publicly demonstrate independence from his close ally in the name of crushing Hamas and saving his reputation.
Take, for instance, the relation between wiping out Hamas while avoiding civilian casualties.
Biden has called Israeli bombing of what Netanyahu calls “indiscriminate,” and dispatched a pair of top officials to Israel to Israel during the past month to advise Netanyahu about Washington’s concerns.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has arrived in Israel with advice that Israel use small unit tactics and precise bombing to rout out Hamas rather heavy air and artillery assaults in outfit to spare civilian lives.
Last week, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced that Israel’s assault on Gaza would enter a phase “that is focused in more precise ways on targeting” and would “distinguish between targets that hit Hamas and those that might take the lives of innocent civilians.”
Sullivan said he was not setting “a deadline and we understand that the campaign must and will continue, but in a lower intensity manner.”
On November 30, Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked Netanyahu to avoid “massive” civilian casualties.
Netanyahu maintains that Israel does not target civilians, but Hamas uses them as “human shields” and is responsible for non-combatant deaths. Over the weekend, he rebuffed Sullivan’s call to reduce the intensity of Israel’s offensive. In a statement, he said, “I told our American friends: our heroic fighters did not fall in vain,” Netanyahu said. “Because of the deep pain of their fall, we are more determined than ever to keep fighting until Hamas is eliminated – until absolute victory.”
During the past three weeks, Israeli aerial bombing and artillery salvoes have increased, according to United Nations officials. Gaza is “hell on earth,” asserted Philippe Lazzarini, director of UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees. He added that insufficient food supplies entering the Gaza Strip was creating starvation.
“Back in Gaza...people are everywhere, living on the streets, lacking everything. They beg for security,” Lazzarini wrote on social media.
The US and Israel are also at odds over the future governance of Gaza once Hamas is defeated as well as longer-range plans not only for a pacified Gaza, but also the West Bank, parts of which are ruled by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Biden has advised Israel not to occupy the Gaza Strip once Hamas is eliminated. He also foresees a role for the Palestinian Authority in a pacified Gaza and West Bank. Netanyahu said Israel does not want to occupy rule Gaza, but also rejects any role for both Hamas and the PA in presumed peace plans.
Israel has inquired outsiders about temporarily occupying Gaza once the war is over. Egypt and Jordan, neighboring countries that are at peace with Israel, have rejected the idea. Israeli government officials also suggested that each European Union country take in 10,000 Palestinian refugees. None has supported the idea.
As for resolving the decades old Israel-Palestinian conflict, Biden and European allies also have all called for reviving the so-called “two state solution,” in which a Palestinian state would include both Gaza and the West Bank, placed under PA governance.
Netanyahu has long rejected the two-state formula and recently said he opposes not only Hamas but also any role for the Palestinian Authority in any peace settlement. He is not alone in the rejecting the formula. Benny Gantz, a minister in Netanyahu’s War Cabinet, refuses to use the word “two-state” in regards to a peace solution. Last Thursday he spoke of backing a “two entity” arrangement, in which Israel would control all borders and security—effectively, what already exists in the West Bank, where Israeli controlled areas settlements hem in islands of Palestinian territory.
“It is clear to both us…that the old concepts and the reality of the past decades need to change and be forward-looking,” Gantz said.
The country’s president, Isaac Herzog, aware that Biden is promoting the two-state idea, said Israel is too mortified by the 1,200 civilians killed by Hamas to speak about the issue now. "I am against just saying ‘two-state solution.’ Why? Because there is an emotional chapter here that must be dealt with. My nation is in bereavement. My nation is in trauma,” he told the Associated Press.
The distance between Biden’s and Netanyahu’s policies also reflect divergent domestic political needs of each.
Due mainly to inflation and floods of illegal migration crossing into the US across its southern border, Biden’s reelection prospects are dimming. He needs both Arab-American and Jewish-American votes to fill out his support in a closely divided population. In particular, Palestinian and other Arab votes, which are concentrated in the American state of Michigan, and are in jeopardy in a place where he barely beat opposition candidate Donald Trump in 2020.
American Jewish supporters of Israel generally trend toward Biden’s Democratic Party, but they might abandon him if they believe he has endangered Israeli security. Surveys suggest that younger voters also oppose. His full-throated support of Israel’s war effort.
Hence, Biden’s effort to soften military backing for Israel while expressing sympathy for Palestinian civilians.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, also faced political pressures before October 7. For the past year, he battling critics who assert he has weakened judicial powers that otherwise would have been used to convicting him of corruption.
Once the war is over, he will likely receive harsh criticism, and calls for his resignation, for his failure to foresee the possibility of Hamas’ massive attack.
He may be counting on full retribution and elimination of Hamas to make up for the tragic deficiency, no matter how intense Washington’s critiques might become.
Despite bombardment that has taken thousands of Palestinian lives, including many women and children, the Israeli onslaught has been unable to root out major Hamas leaders, one of Netanyahu’s top goals. Indicating its frustration, Netanyahu’s government recently announced it will reward Palestinians who provide intelligence leading to the capture of Hamas leaders. Leaflets dropped over parts of Gaza promised, “Anyone who presents information that could help us arrest the individuals who brought destruction and ruin to the Gaza Strip will be rewarded.”
For example, the government offered $400,000 for information on the whereabout of top Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
The government also supplemented his pledge to wipe out Hamas by ordering the assassination of Hamas officials abroad, some whom roam friendly countries. Ronen Bar, head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, said Netanyahu’s cabinet had ordered the organization to "to eliminate” Hamas.
“We will do this everywhere, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar,” he said. “It will take a few years but we will be there to do it," Bar said in a videotaped announcement broadcast in early December.
Does Netanyahu care that his policies might be offending Biden? Perhaps not. Biden is likely to face Donald Trump in 2024 elections. Like Biden, Trump has expressed full military support for Israel but without either the cautions about killing civilians or expressions of support for a two-state solution.
When it's all determined by domestic politics - as Mr Williams' article suggests - the USA has lost its world leadership. The UNSC vote on 8 December left it isolated and having to use its veto. The UNGA then met on 12/12 and passed a demand for an immediate ceasefire with a massive majority of 153 in favour, just 10 against, and 23 abstentions.
The French President has burnt his bridges with Israel and USA, and one of London's biggest ever marches was held last month in solidarity with Palestine (the biggest ever, by the way, was against the the US Iraq War). Next year's General Election may well see His Majesty's Government launch BDS, arms embargoes and other anti-Israel policies.
Worldwide, social media has come into play in a way that it couldn't in 2008-9 Operation Cast Lead: Israel really has lost the battle, and maybe even the war too, and its implications are severely damaging the West as a whole.
Biden is fiddling in domestic politics while Gaza, US leadership and the West's reputation burns. To contradict Mr Williams' assumption of Domestic Determination of foreign policy, Republicans are setting conditions for more aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, tied in with border security and how illegal Mexican immigrants are processed in a way that may well make Biden or the Democrat nominee lose the next election.
The poverty and myopia of thinking of the Biden Administration and the US Department of State is astounding, especially when you think Israel has nowhere to go, nor have the tiny Jewish voting population in the USA. Biden should have cut the Gordian Knot and forced Israel to abide by the law of war and to come up with an alternative plan other than pulverising Gaza in what looks to the world like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Now the USA and the West is left to rebuild Gaza at exorbitant cost, but I suspect hearts and minds will nevertheless have been lost forever.
A Dan Williams special: Command of the facts and well-reasoned analysis combined with straightforward language.