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After initial operations wound up, American officials told Israeli officials that what was done in the north of Gaza could not be done to the south. Yet after telling people to move to the south to get out of harm’s way, Israel then proceeded to bomb it in a manner that Biden himself admitted is “indiscriminate.”
The United States has repeatedly pressured Israel to make greater efforts to protect innocent civilians, but to little avail. Now it has been counseling against an invasion of Rafah, the city nestled close to Egypt where more than 1 million Palestinians have huddled together. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to invade Rafah, whether another hostage deal is made or not.
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Washington has warned that after the war there should be no Israeli seizure of land in Gaza and no new Israeli occupation of the territory. The Israeli government’s plans are to do both.
The result is that American policy on the Gaza war now appears hapless, ineffective and immoral. The image of U.S. officials wringing their hands about civilian casualties while providing ever-more weapons is grotesque. The image of a president of the United States mumbling words such as “indiscriminate” and “over the top” to describe Israel’s bombings suggests weakness and passivity.
Part of the problem is that in trusting the Israeli government, Biden is trusting Netanyahu, an exceptionally clever politician who knows how to handle American presidents expertly and has done so for decades. This time, Bibi has outsmarted, outmaneuvered and outplayed Biden.
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But the problem goes beyond Bibi. Israel is in trauma. The Oct. 7 attack shook the country to the core. The sense of safety that Israel was supposed to confer on its people has been shattered. As a result, many Israelis are allowing policies that they will regret deeply. Biden, as a true friend of Israel, has the credibility to tell them the truth publicly and directly — perhaps in an address to the Israeli Knesset, as foreign policy expert Richard Haass has suggested.
Since the war began, 30,000 people have died in Gaza, a large portion of them children. About 1 in 4 are on the brink of famine and almost all are dependent on food aid. The water supply as of late December is 7 percent of what it was before the war. Most of its hospitals no longer function.
A visiting Oxford-based surgeon, Nick Maynard, described the condition at a hospital in Gaza, one of the few that are partially functioning: “We saw mainly a lot of children coming in with the most appalling injuries, many of whom you knew were going to die. And you couldn’t give them pain relief. There was often no morphine. There was nowhere for them to die in dignity. So often they were just literally left lying on the floor of the corner of the emergency department to die.”
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Israel says its goal is to totally destroy Hamas. You can kill Hamas militants. You can uproot its infrastructure. But you cannot destroy Hamas because it is really an idea: that armed resistance is the only way Palestinians will get their rights. To defeat this idea, you need a better one — a way to show that nonviolent action and cooperation would lead to better lives for Palestinians and lasting security for both peoples.
Biden should go to Israel and show the country his love for it by speaking these hard truths. He would also show America and the world that he still has the energy, moral clarity and wisdom to lead.
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When Hamas launched its gruesome terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, President Biden made a decision based on conviction and calculation. He announced his complete solidarity with the country. Biden must have calculated that the only way to have any influence on Israel would be to hug it close, show real empathy, send it the arms it needed and thus earn Israel’s trust to shape its response. It was a thought-through strategy, but it has failed almost completely.
From the start, the administration urged the Israelis to consider proportionality in their response to Hamas. Israel heard it and went ahead with one of the most extensive bombing campaigns in this century against a population of about 2.2 million people that, by Israel’s own estimates, contained about 30,000 Hamas militants. By one January estimate, more than half of the buildings across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.
The U.S. administration counseled Israel against a large ground invasion of Gaza, advising it to take a narrower, targeted approach aimed at eliminating Hamas militants and infrastructure. The Israeli government held lots of long meetings with U.S. officials — and then went ahead with a ground invasion.
The Biden team urged a humanitarian pause, but got only a brief one when it was able to get the Qatari government to broker a hostage exchange.
After initial operations wound up, American officials told Israeli officials that what was done in the north of Gaza could not be done to the south. Yet after telling people to move to the south to get out of harm’s way, Israel then proceeded to bomb it in a manner that Biden himself admitted is “indiscriminate.”
The United States has repeatedly pressured Israel to make greater efforts to protect innocent civilians, but to little avail. Now it has been counseling against an invasion of Rafah, the city nestled close to Egypt where more than 1 million Palestinians have huddled together. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to invade Rafah, whether another hostage deal is made or not.
Washington has warned that after the war there should be no Israeli seizure of land in Gaza and no new Israeli occupation of the territory. The Israeli government’s plans are to do both.
The result is that American policy on the Gaza war now appears hapless, ineffective and immoral. The image of U.S. officials wringing their hands about civilian casualties while providing ever-more weapons is grotesque. The image of a president of the United States mumbling words such as “indiscriminate” and “over the top” to describe Israel’s bombings suggests weakness and passivity.
Part of the problem is that in trusting the Israeli government, Biden is trusting Netanyahu, an exceptionally clever politician who knows how to handle American presidents expertly and has done so for decades. This time, Bibi has outsmarted, outmaneuvered and outplayed Biden.
But the problem goes beyond Bibi. Israel is in trauma. The Oct. 7 attack shook the country to the core. The sense of safety that Israel was supposed to confer on its people has been shattered. As a result, many Israelis are allowing policies that they will regret deeply. Biden, as a true friend of Israel, has the credibility to tell them the truth publicly and directly — perhaps in an address to the Israeli Knesset, as foreign policy expert Richard Haass has suggested.
Since the war began, 30,000 people have died in Gaza, a large portion of them children. About 1 in 4 are on the brink of famine and almost all are dependent on food aid. The water supply as of late December is 7 percent of what it was before the war. Most of its hospitals no longer function.
A visiting Oxford-based surgeon, Nick Maynard, described the condition at a hospital in Gaza, one of the few that are partially functioning: “We saw mainly a lot of children coming in with the most appalling injuries, many of whom you knew were going to die. And you couldn’t give them pain relief. There was often no morphine. There was nowhere for them to die in dignity. So often they were just literally left lying on the floor of the corner of the emergency department to die.”
Israel says its goal is to totally destroy Hamas. You can kill Hamas militants. You can uproot its infrastructure. But you cannot destroy Hamas because it is really an idea: that armed resistance is the only way Palestinians will get their rights. To defeat this idea, you need a better one — a way to show that nonviolent action and cooperation would lead to better lives for Palestinians and lasting security for both peoples.
Biden should go to Israel and show the country his love for it by speaking these hard truths. He would also show America and the world that he still has the energy, moral clarity and wisdom to lead.
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