Biden loses patience with Netanyahu over Gaza bloodbath

Slowly but surely, US President Joe Biden is saying the quiet stuff out loud regarding the crisis in the Middle East. After more than two months during which no daylight could be found between the White House and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, suddenly chinks in the armour pockmark the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv.

Last week, Biden conceded that Israel is engaged in an “indiscriminate bombing” campaign in Gaza. He warned that Netanyahu is “starting to lose” international support for his military campaign, and expressed fears that members of Israel’s war cabinet – including far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – fail to understand the risks they are taking.

But the president’s candour was reserved for a closed-door fundraising event at a luxury hotel in Washington. He said none of it near a camera nor a microphone.

Publicly, he has sought to downplay his predicament. At a Hannukah reception at the White House, Biden claimed that Netanyahu has a picture of the two men on his desk dating back more than 50 years, and captured when they were both at the start of their long careers. “I wrote on the top of it ‘Bibi, I love you but I don’t agree with a damn thing you have to say,” Biden told his audience, before adding “it’s about the same today”. The laughter in the room was of the nervous variety.

After leaking word that he now wants Israel to halt its all-out assault on Gaza and engage instead in a strategy that is more targeted and nuanced, Biden sent his National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, to Tel Aviv to break the news to Netanyahu in person. But while Sullivan was en route, Netanyahu insisted his military campaign will continue for “months” to come.

After the meeting was over, Sullivan appeared to back down, telling reporters that “we’re not here to tell anybody you must do X, you must do Y”. The war on Hamas, he said, was always envisaged to take place in “phases”, and the move to a more targeted offensive should simply be viewed through that prism.

This week, it will fall to Biden’s Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, to convey unwelcome messages to the Israeli leadership. Earlier this month, Austin warned that Israel will face “strategic defeat” in the war unless it takes far greater steps to protect civilian lives in Gaza. Now he has the deaths of three Israeli hostages, mistakenly killed by the IDF on Friday, to fuel his argument further.

The weekend saw calls by David Cameron in London and the German government for a “sustainable ceasefire”. France went further, demanding an “immediate and durable truce”. So far, no Biden cabinet member has echoed any of that language. But the move may not be far off.

Related Article

Tension has been mounting within Washington’s corridors of power for weeks. Last Wednesday, around three dozen people claiming to be White House staff members protested outside the building carrying a banner that read “President Biden: Your Staff Demands A Ceasefire”. The demonstrators concealed their identities with facemasks and sunglasses.

Other officials have been bolder, with scores of State Department staff members using a long-established “dissent channel” to express their disapproval of the very US government policy they are tasked with implementing.

More than anything else, Biden knows that the crisis in the Middle East imperils his own bid for re-election. His approval rating is at a record low of 37 per cent, and the fact that American citizens remain among the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza underscores that Biden remains at the mercy of both Palestinian terrorists and an Israeli prime minister for whom he has little regard.

The clock is ticking on Biden’s willingness to allow those external forces even a measure of control over his electoral fate. When his pivot on Israel is complete, he will still have to explain to voters why he gave Netanyahu so much rope at the beginning of the military campaign, and why he expressed personal skepticism about Palestinian claims of mounting civilian casualties.

But to get to that stage, he must first complete his U-turn. Defence Secretary Austin is the man to watch over the next few days.