President Joe Biden has drawn his line in the Mideast sand by delaying shipments of 3,500 heavy bombs to Israel to deter Israel’s leader from using such weapons in an invasion of densely populated Rafah on Gaza’s southern border, where more than 1 million civilians have been sheltering.
It isn’t the first time an American president sent a message of tough love to the Jewish state, but it is one of the strongest. Both Republicans and Democrats have grappled with Israel at times in a long, close but sometimes stormy friendship. President Dwight Eisenhower threatened sanctions over the Suez crisis, forcing Israel to withdraw from the Sinai in 1957. President Ronald Reagan withheld shipments of F-16 fighter jets to Israel in 1981 over rising conflict in the Middle East.
When President George H.W. Bush’s administration was frustrated by Israel’s posing obstacles to peace talks, then-Secretary of State James Baker famously offered up the White House switchboard number at a congressional hearing during a U.S.-Israeli rift in 1990, declaring, “When you’re serious about peace, call us.”
Biden has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for months that he’s had enough of what the president called “indiscriminate bombing” of civilians in Gaza. The U.S. is right to pause the shipment of more taxpayer-funded offensive weapons, especially the 2,000-pound bombs that have leveled city blocks in Gaza and caused horrific numbers of casualties.
The move is a reasonable, measured point of leverage for a supportive ally to use until Israel devises war plans to go after Hamas in ways that don’t lead to more widespread deaths of innocents, a graver humanitarian catastrophe and deeper famine in Gaza.
One of Israeli’s most extreme anti-Arab ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted on X that “Hamas (heart emoji) Biden.” But Biden is widely considered the most pro-Israel U.S. president in history, and he has quite rightly underscored America’s ironclad support for Israel, defended the nation against Iran and continued shipments of U.S. weapons Israel needs to defend itself, such as its Iron Dome missile defense system.
Most Americans are also now critical of this war, and not just the pro-peace demonstrators roiling U.S. college campuses and chanting, “Genocide Joe.” Americans now disapprove of Israel’s military action in Gaza by a solid margin of 55% in one recent Gallup poll — up from 45% disapproving in November.
That should give Israel’s government pause. Despite predictable condemnations from conservatives that Biden is weakening Israel and emboldening Hamas, just the opposite is true. Netanyahu’s right-wing, extremist government is ordering evacuations and threatening a full-scale assault on Rafah, the last major stronghold of Hamas, and the United Nations estimated some 300,000 Palestinians fled Rafah over the past week.
Going forward without a workable plan to protect the lives of civilians will not only damage relations with the U.S. but also with other democracies and Arab states. It’s not in Israel’s best interest, and many of Israel’s supporters are concerned, including pro-Israel lobbyists and Jewish-led groups joining in campus protests calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont called on Biden to use the leverage of American arms shipments to rein in Netanyahu, noting, “We can no longer be complicit in Netanyahu’s horrific war against the Palestinian people.” He was not alone.
“A full-scale Rafah operation risks the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians, puts (Israeli) hostages in more danger, jeopardizes negotiations and risks further escalation on all fronts,” warned Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a pro-peace, pro-democracy advocacy group of American supporters of Israel. “U.S. aid to Israel must not be a blank check. The Israeli government should be held to the same standards of all aid recipients, including requirements to uphold international law and facilitate humanitarian aid.”
Seven months into the war in Gaza, Netanyahu has yet to reveal a viable strategy for the day after the war ends — neither a workable plan for an alternative government to Hamas nor a feasible path to long-term peace with the Palestinians. Even his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, vowed publicly this week to oppose long-term military rule in Gaza.
More destruction of Gaza may indeed degrade the remaining four Hamas battalions in Rafah, a goal Biden shares, but unless it is done strategically, it will continue to radicalize the next generation of Palestinians to fight against Israel while eroding more of Israel’s international support. Palestinians need to see an alternative: a non-Hamas government and a viable pathway to an independent state of their own, even if it may take years to achieve.
To be clear, Hamas is a terrorist organization that has no interest in peace. It seeks to destroy Israel, kill Jews and set up an Islamic state. Its forces are responsible for starting this war when they slaughtered 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 and took 250 hostages back into Gaza after burning, raping and mutilating survivors. But Israel’s military retaliation has killed as many as 35,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, and displaced most of the 2.3 million Gazans from their homes.
Israel can’t defeat an ideology, but it can and should degrade and decimate the Hamas military units that threaten the Jewish state. There is no daylight between Biden and Netanyahu on that goal. But how Israel does this matters, and Netanyahu is increasingly under fire for military and intelligence failures in advance of Oct. 7 and for how he has conducted the war. A majority of the Israeli public, 58%, want him to resign immediately, according to one recent poll.
Israelis are still understandably traumatized by the horrors of Oct. 7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Palestinians are reeling from the death and destruction wrought by Israel’s retaliation. A cease-fire, the release of the hostages and the full resumption of humanitarian aid into Gaza should be the priority now — not heavy bombs.
Only tough diplomacy stands a chance.
Storer H. Rowley, a former national editor and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, teaches journalism and communication at Northwestern University.
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