Strikes In Gaza, Iran Show Limits Of Biden's Leverage On Israel
President Joe Biden’s balancing act with Israel became increasingly difficult this week with the country’s deadly attack on an aid convoy in Gaza and an airstrike on Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus.
(Bloomberg) -- US President Joe Biden’s balancing act with Israel became increasingly difficult this week with the country’s deadly attack on an aid convoy in Gaza and an airstrike on Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus.
Both episodes tested the limits of Biden’s strategy, which has seen the American president support Israel’s war against Hamas while criticizing the way it’s being conducted. They also drew new scrutiny to the question of US leverage — how much Biden has over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and whether he’s willing to exert it.
“It’s not so much that the US is losing leverage over Israel as it is that Washington has rightly been reluctant to use its leverage because it’s on big-ticket items” such as supplying advanced weapons and defending Israel at the United Nations, said Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.
Read More: Biden to Speak With Netanyahu as Tensions Flare Over Aid Deaths
Biden plans to speak with Netanyahu on Thursday, according to a US official. The president is likely to reiterate the sharp criticism he delivered on Tuesday after an Israeli military airstrike killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, founded by the chef José Andrés. “Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians,” Biden said then.
Shortly before that, Israel’s airstrike in Syria risked a direct confrontation with Iran, which has operated so far through anti-Israel proxies including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. The Israeli military drive in Gaza is aimed at wiping out Hamas, which staged a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and is designated a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union.
Now, Panikoff said, “if Israel does not make sufficient changes in its operating effort, the Biden administration will face increasingly rising pressure to leverage one of the big-ticket items, even as it clearly does not want to do so.”
Criticism from top US officials continued on Wednesday, when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in a conversation with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “expressed his outrage” over the airstrike in Gaza.
Austin, according to a Defense Department account of the call, urged Gallant “to conduct a swift and transparent investigation, to share their conclusions publicly, and to hold those responsible to account.” He also called for Israel to “take concrete steps” to safeguard Palestinian civilians as well as aid workers.
Political pressure over Israel’s conduct has increased in the US during this election year, but the Netanyahu government has been slow to realize that the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip could cause significant blowback, according to a US official who discussed the sensitive matter on condition of anonymity.
Biden has faced growing pressure from some Democratic lawmakers, such as Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, to withhold offensive military aid, including bombs, until Israel allows humanitarian aid to flow without restriction. Van Hollen has urged Biden to enforce the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits assistance to countries that restrict “directly or indirectly” the delivery of US humanitarian assistance unless the president determines doing so is in the national security interest of the US.
“Even the threat of withholding military assistance can be an effective source of leverage,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington who previously advised Palestinian leaders. “But even that, they won’t do. They’ve kind of made it clear. Weapons are sacrosanct.”
Read More: Israel’s Gantz Ups Ante With Netanyahu by Calling for Early Vote
Administration officials reject suggestions that the US has been soft on Israel, or that American diplomacy hasn’t yielded changes in Israeli behavior. Officials point to humanitarian pauses in the fighting and corridors for aid workers. And despite vocal disagreements with Netanyahu over a threatened assault on the Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, Israeli forces still haven’t gone in.
Although the Hamas-run health authority says more than 32,000 people have been killed since Israel began its effort to eliminate Hamas, the strike on the humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen — founded by a chef well-known for his restaurants in Washington — struck a particular nerve. Biden said in his Tuesday statement that he was “outraged” and called for a swift investigation. A top Israeli military official apologized, saying the strike was a mistake and that Israel was setting up a coordination center to better arrange aid distribution in the war zone.
“I don’t think you can look at what we’ve been saying, what we’ve been doing, or even the president’s statement last night and say that we’ve somehow gone easy on Israel,” White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday. “We continue to act on the belief that Israel has a right to defend itself against the still-viable threat by Hamas. They still have every right and responsibility to their people to eliminate that threat.”
Yet critics say that while the Biden administration has recently ratcheted up rhetoric critical of Israel’s conduct of the war, it has mostly stayed the course on policy. It has also stood by Israeli assurances that its military is using US-provided weapons appropriately, despite allegations by human rights groups of violations of international humanitarian law and the blocking of US-funded aid.
“The US has been slowly, and very late in time, shifting its rhetoric and messaging,” said Nancy Okail, president of the Center for International Policy in Washington, which on Wednesday issued a policy paper recommending that the US immediately suspend arms shipments to Israel.
Although more criticism has come from the administration, she said, “there has been a lag and a discrepancy between rhetoric and policy, and policy is what would actually change the direction of Israel and its military operations.”
--With assistance from Michelle Jamrisko, Jennifer Jacobs, Steven T. Dennis, Jordan Fabian and Tony Capaccio.
(Updates with Austin, starting in seventh paragraph.)
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