Smother with love, counsel restraint: Biden’s Israel strategy

Washington: In his recent book, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future, the journalist Franklin Fowler draws a masterful summary of the US President’s approach to Israel through an episode in 2021 when Hamas rockets from Gaza descended on the skylines of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and furious Israeli retribution followed.

One, offering historical context, Fowler suggests that Biden is deeply committed to the alliance with Israel from the time he met the then Israeli PM Golda Meir as a first-time Senator in 1973, on the cusp of the Yom Kippur War. Two, he genuinely does not believe that both sides are equally to blame and supports Israel’s right to defend itself when Hamas launches terror attacks against Israel.

Three, Biden has known Benjamin Netanyahu since the 1980s and despite having a troubled relationship with him often because of his far-Right politics, Biden has always maintained a degree of personal warmth with the Israeli leader, once sending him a photograph inscribed, “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love ya.”

And four, in 2021, acting against the advice of his closest aides, Biden did not call for a ceasefire or criticise Israel’s reaction, which he believed would only push Netanyahu away. Instead, in his view, the “quickest way to end the conflict was to stand squarely with Israel, to smother Netanyahu with love”. Fowler writes, “Then, at the right moment, Biden said that he would take advantage of the trust he had deposited in the bank. Only then would he tell Bibi to wind the war down. But in the meantime, he was going to hug Bibi tight.”

In 2021, Netanyahu continued his offensive even as Biden came under criticism from his party’s progressives for not doing enough. But quietly, Biden had been speaking to the Israeli leader, asking him how this would end. Netanyahu said it will end when Israel restores deterrence. Biden asked him how will he know that. Netanyahu said, “We will know,” without offering any metric. Biden let it pass, and only in the fourth call with him, Biden told the Israeli PM, “Hey man, we are out of runaway here. It’s over”. Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to a ceasefire.

Almost 30 months later, the context is similar — Hamas has launched terror attacks, Israel is responding with fury — but also different — the scale of the terror attacks and the nature of retribution is far more intense and the wider region is in turmoil with a high potential for the conflict to escalate.

But Biden’s worldview on Israel and his 2021 strategy offer clues about what he is seeking to do, reflected in his statements after the terror attack, his visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, and the broader US diplomacy in the region.

For one, by backing Israel, Biden is acting according to his instincts honed over five decades in politics, his domestic political imperatives which dictate supporting the Jewish state, his outlook towards Hamas and terror and rejection of the equivalence between both sides. But he is also deploying the same textbook that he did in 2021 by hugging Netanyahu tight. He has spoken to the Israeli PM over half a dozen times. He hugged Netanyahu as soon as he landed in Tel Aviv. He told him in remarks open to the media that Israel was not alone. He has outlined the US security assistance that has already been offered. He has sent his Secretary of State Antony J Blinken, who spoke of his own Jewish roots, to the region. The Biden administration has not called for a ceasefire and vehemently denounced any attempts to equate the two sides. And Biden quite promptly, but after checking with Pentagon, publicly backed Israel’s claims on the attack on a hospital in Gaza being a result of a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad.

But at the same time, Biden has used this trust in the bank with Israel to push for restraint, calm and clarity. The domestic political operators in the Democratic Party realise that there is a churn within American society and politics today, and if criticising Israel was almost blasphemous even a few decades ago, there are today multiple constituencies which are open about their discomfort with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its brutality. The voices on college campuses, the voices in the progressive faction of the party, the anxieties among American Muslims, the concern even among younger more liberal Jewish voters cannot be ignored. In addition, the US administration is conscious that being seen as complicit in potential Israeli war crimes and turning a blind eye to the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza will erode its diplomatic triumphs not just in West Asia but across the global south. It also dents its case on Ukraine which, after all, is based on resisting external occupation and respecting liberty and revives memories of western hypocrisy.

And that is why Biden used his visit to tell Netanyahu that protecting civilian lives was important. He shared with Israel how rage after 9/11 had led the US to make mistakes and cautioned Tel Aviv from emulating those mistakes. He announced a $100 million humanitarian assistance package for Gaza and West Bank. He convinced Israel to allow Egypt to open up a pathway to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. He appointed a special envoy for humanitarian affairs. He strongly distinguished between Hamas and the Palestinians, effectively telling Israel that collectively punishing the whole population for the terror of a group won’t be right.

Given the scale of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, critics will see American actions will probably be seen as inadequate at best and a charade at worst. And no one will forget the historic omissions and complicity of the past. But Biden is clearly addressing multiple constituencies — domestic and external, national security hawks and liberals, the Jewish community at home and abroad and Muslims at home and abroad, the West and Israel but also the wider global south. And he is doing so with his strategy of smothering Israel with love, while counselling restraint. Whether it works will have to be seen.

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