Biden needs to send Israel a different message
Biden faces the challenge of limited influence over Israel's military actions, leading to global blame for the devastating consequences of the Gaza campaign, which may create far-reaching consequences
US President Joe Biden took to the pulpit in a church in South Carolina this week, meaning to lay into his likely challenger for the White House, Donald Trump. But protesters stole his show with chants of 'ceasefire now'. After they were shown the door, Biden glumly said that he understands their passion and that he has been 'quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza.'
Biden's problem is that the Israeli government has been not so quietly ignoring Biden, pounding the Gaza Strip with huge tunnel-busting bombs, almost half of them unguided. As so often in America's relationships with its partners — recall South Vietnam half a century ago, or Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai more recently — it is become clear that Washington has much less influence over decisions made by its partners than one might expect, even when they rely on US protection.
The absurd result is that the world blames the US for the excesses of its friends. And excess is the appropriate word. Israel's campaign against Hamas has now killed more than 22,000 Palestinians and turned almost the entire population of more than 2 million Gazans into refugees (many for the second time in their lives). The United Nations and World Health Organization warn that everyone in the strip is at risk of starvation and disease.
For Gazans, the trauma is far from over. The strip now resembles Dresden in 1945 or Carthage in 146 BCE. A Palestinian looking at the rubble that used to be home may feel as the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus did two millennia ago, after the Romans defeated his tribe and erased its civilization: "They make a desert and call it peace."
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The difference is that the Israelis are not even calling the Gazan desert peace yet. They are merely signaling that they are getting ready to scale their high-intensity campaign down to something they will call surgical strikes. That, at least, is what Biden is hoping, after demanding an end to 'indiscriminate' bombing for weeks.
To be sure, Israel had not only the right but the duty to destroy the military infrastructure of Hamas after that group's terrorist fighters attacked Israel on October 7 and wreaked violence with a singular sadism. And the US, as Israel's best friend, was right to support Israel in that effort — materially, diplomatically and morally; with ammo, vetoes in the UN Security Council and military cover against Iran.
In recent months, though, Israel has lost its sense of proportion — a concept that has ethical, strategic and legal relevance — and put its American ally on the spot. At the UN, the US finds itself almost alone in backing Israel, and its isolation will get worse now that hearings have started at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in a case brought by South Africa that charges Israel with genocide. The US is right to reject that accusation. But Washington looks out of touch in the court of world opinion.
The gulf between the US and Israel on one side and the world on the other is likely to grow. Even if Israel tempers its military tactics in the strip, its differences with the US will merely shift to the biggest question: What next?
Biden has made clear that he eventually wants the Israelis to get out of the Gaza Strip; a reformed version of the Palestinian Authority to take over governance, with the support of other countries in the region; and all parties to resume work toward a sovereign and viable Palestinian state. Israel, by contrast, keeps making clear that it intends nothing of the sort. The only nuance is how drastically its alternative courses will veer off the US mark.
Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, has suggested a plan, apparently backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that is still relatively polite about ignoring Biden's ideas. In this vision, Israel has no civilian presence in the strip but retains full military control. The plan foresees no role for the Authority, and thereby buries hopes of Palestinian sovereignty.
Two other cabinet members are not so bashful. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both far-right extremists, want to resettle the Palestinian population of Gaza — where is unclear — to make space for Jewish settlers. The US has called that suggestion 'inflammatory and irresponsible.' But the idea has support even from some moderates alongside the hardliners. The latter include Daniella Weiss, a leader of the Israeli settler movement in the West Bank, who wants Palestinians out of Gaza so that Jews can move in and 'see the sea.'
Even if actual Israeli policy in the end leans toward the moderate of these poles, it will clash with US strategy for the Middle East and wider world. And as the conflict between the two allies escalates, the political fallout will spread far and wide.
Washington has strategic goals beyond and above Israel. They include deterring the other nuclear superpower, Russia, from escalating its aggression; containing China as it challenges US primacy; and managing the rogue regimes in North Korea and Iran. All four powers are increasingly aligned against the US. To hold them in check, Washington will need help from the rest of the world. But by tying its fate to Israel's, it will lose that support.
Indirectly, Israel could even change American and world history in another way. The US is in an election year, in which Biden is on record as defining the stakes as being about democracy itself. The outcome will be tense and tight. And now Biden is losing support among young voters, because even in the US, the public mood is turning against Israel, as the protesters in that South Carolina church showed.
As a matter of grand strategy, the US must be a good and reliable ally to its friends. But its support can never be unconditional, for Washington must balance many interests, never forgetting its own. It is high time for Biden to change his message to Israel: We want to keep helping you, but only if you also listen to us.
Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.
Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.
