Joe Biden is desperate for this war to end – but
neither Netanyahu nor Hamas is in any hurry
Jonathan
Freedland
Failing to stop an all-out attack on Rafah would make
the US president look weak – an unthinkable prospect in election year
Fri 10 May
2024 17.25 BST
Beware
cornering a US president anxious about re-election. Benjamin Netanyahu has
repeatedly ignored that advice in his dealings with Joe Biden, and this week
his country learned the price.
It came in
the revelation that Biden had withheld the supply of about 3,500 bombs,
refusing to let US munitions play a part in an Israeli assault on the southern
Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have sought refuge.
The president was at pains to say he was not giving up his “ironclad”
commitment to Israel. Instead, it was just the specific, long-threatened Rafah
operation that he would not back with weapons. “We’re not walking away from
Israel’s security,” Biden told CNN. “We’re walking away from Israel’s ability
to wage war in those areas.”
To
understand why this is such a big deal, remind yourself of the people and the
countries involved. The US is Israel’s most crucial ally. Israel’s former prime
minister Yitzhak Rabin used to say that his country’s number one strategic
asset was not this or that weapon – not even its unconfirmed, and undenied,
nuclear arsenal – but its relationship with Washington. For many decades, the
US has served as Israel’s chief arms supplier and diplomatic protector. And yet
in the space of less than six weeks, Washington has withheld its veto at the UN
security council, allowing a resolution to pass in late March that Israel
wanted blocked, and now it has closed the doors to at least part of its
armoury.
What’s
more, these actions were taken by a man who is, by some distance, the most
personally devoted supporter of Israel ever to sit in the Oval Office. Biden is
a Democrat from the era when the notion of a restored Jewish homeland in the
Middle East – promising an end to two millennia of exile and persecution –
would turn US liberals misty-eyed. It takes little prompting for Biden to boast
that he has met every Israeli leader since Golda Meir. Unlike past presidents,
his affinity for Israel is not solely the product of electoral calculation: as
his Jewish supporters put it, it’s in his kishkes. It’s in his guts.
Meanwhile,
Netanyahu came to prominence in the 1980s as an Israeli diplomat who spoke
fluent American. He offered himself then and since as an expert on the US
political landscape, a crucial skill for a would-be Israeli leader. For
decades, his message to the Israeli electorate has been that only he – who
stands in “another league” above his domestic rivals – can be trusted with the
all-important US-Israel relationship.
But look at
the state of it now. Biden has become the first US president in more than four
decades to deny Israel military aid in this way. (Ronald Reagan conveyed US
fury after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 by delaying a consignment of
fighter planes.) And why has he done it? Because, under Netanyahu, a growing
section of the US public is souring on Israel as never before.
It’s true
that a bedrock level of support for the country exists that may surprise those
seeing daily footage of US campuses in ferment. When Gallup asked Americans in
March where their sympathies lay, 51% stood with Israel, while 27% backed the
Palestinians. But among Democrats and young people, it’s the Palestinians who
prevail, by eight-point margins in both cases.
Those are
the numbers that weigh on Biden and his re-election team, as they face the
unravelling of the coalition that defeated Donald Trump in 2020. A period of
newly intense suffering in Gaza will alienate yet more of the voters they need
to win. The White House asked Netanyahu to show them a plan that would achieve
a goal they regarded as legitimate – the removal from Rafah of Hamas’s last
remaining battalions – but without risking mass civilian casualties. Netanyahu
could not do it. Which is why Washington has resorted to a more direct means of
making him stop.
It’s become
a test of strength that Biden cannot afford to lose. He made an all-out attack
on Rafah a red line: if Netanyahu crosses it, that makes Biden look weak.
Facing an opponent, Trump, determined to make strong v weak the defining choice
of the coming election, he cannot let that stand.
But still
Netanyahu refuses to buckle, telling his people ahead of Israeli independence
day that they will fight alone, without US arms, with their fingernails, if
they have to. He wants to sound Churchillian, but these are words of weakness,
not strength. For he is pulled in two directions: Washington wants him to stay
out of Rafah, while his far-right coalition partners, the ultra-nationalists
Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, insist he go in hard, to finish the job
and win a “total victory” over Hamas.
US support
may be essential for Israel’s national interest, but in a contest of Biden v
Ben-Gvir, there was only going to be one winner. Without the latter’s support,
Netanyahu loses his coalition. Suddenly, he will have to face the voters
itching to punish him for the failures that led to 7 October, as well as the
courts, for a resumed trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Which is why he will always buckle to the bigots to his right. It may have
Netanyahu’s name on it, but this is Ben-Gvir’s government now.
It’s the
same logic that has led Netanyahu to drag his feet in talks to broker a
ceasefire and release the Israeli hostages still held in the darkness by Hamas.
Biden wants him to do a deal, because Biden needs this war over. The Israeli
public want him to do a deal, because they are desperate to bring the captives
home. But Ben-Gvir is the man who opposed the last and only agreed hostage
release deal, back in November. He prefers to keep pounding Gaza, harder and
harder, in search of an illusory and impossible victory. And because that’s
what Ben-Gvir wants, that’s what Netanyahu gives him – even if it means pushing
Biden into an ever tighter corner.
Still,
Biden and Netanyahu are not the only players in this bleak drama. Yahya Sinwar,
Hamas’s leader in Gaza, has his own calculations, his own determination to
remain in charge. Those who have studied him closely believe his priority is
not so much an end to the killing of innocent civilians – on the contrary, the
more Gazans who die, the more damage that does to the international standing of
his enemy, Israel – but rather a scenario that allows him to claim victory.
Sinwar thought he had that earlier this week, with the deal Hamas loudly
accepted. The stumbling block is the agreed duration of any cessation of
violence. Sinwar does not want it to be temporary, even if that would save many
lives and ease the misery of Gaza. He wants a declaration that the war is
permanently over. And for that he can wait.
And so
there is no deal, because neither Netanyahu nor Sinwar believes what’s on offer
serves their interests. As the former US state department official Aaron David
Miller puts it: “The only party that’s really in a hurry is Biden.” Though
that’s not quite right. Also in a hurry are the hostages and their families,
whose agony has endured for more than 200 days, and the civilians of Rafah,
huddled in tents, grieving their tens of thousands of dead, without running
water or sanitation. They’re in a hurry too. But no one is listening to them.
Jonathan
Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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