Biden Blunts Israel's Defiance
By Richard C. Gross
“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) of Geneva, an influential philosopher of the Enlightenment
Israel’s killing of seven aid workers in Gaza, accidental or not, pulled the plug on Washington’s patience with Israeli defiance over maintaining the hurried pace of its deadly war in Gaza. America demanded an immediate cease-fire and rapid feeding of starving civilians in the heavily bomb-damaged coastal enclave.
If not, the United States will reassess its policy toward Israel’s six-month war against Hamas that has involved the 2.2 million Gazans because of the incessant bombing of the northern and central regions of the territory. Washington previously has warned Israel against attacking Hamas in Rafah, a southern city bordering Egypt.
Getting tough worked immediately. Do you think it should have been done months ago?
Israel announced that it will open three corridors of humanitarian aid for Gaza: its main Erez crossing into northern Gaza, its southern port of Ashdod for direct shipments into Israel for supplies and to permit trucks from Jordan to cross Israel to enter the enclave at its Kerem Shalom gateway.
Cutting short the war would be against Israeli interests. It repeatedly has argued that it needs to eliminate Hamas to ensure cessation of terrorism from Gaza. It says four terrorist battalions plus Hamas’ leaders are hiding in tunnels in Rafah. But it’s time to call a halt, to find another way to go after the terrorists hiding in tunnels without bombing them.
For everyone but Israel, it seems, the problem of pursuing its current aggressive policy is the humanitarian cost of the war. The Gaza Health Ministry estimates 32,000 Palestinians have been killed without a breakdown of how many are terrorists or how many uncounted dead may be in the mountains of concrete rubble from bombs, tanks and artillery. Hamas runs the ministry.
Would it be in Hamas’ interests to inflate the number of casualties to urge outrage from the West? Hamas has refused to accept Israeli cease-fire offers.
The threat of a U.S. policy change came in an estimated 30-minute phone call between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It marked the toughest Biden has been toward Netanyahu in the six months of a presidential visit to Israel and multiple phone calls between the two leaders.
“If we don’t see the changes we need to see, there’ll be changes in policy,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a stop at NATO headquarters in Brussels. He was expounding on the White House summary of the Biden-Netanyahu call.
The two spoke three days after an Israeli nighttime strike against three vehicles of the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, killing seven of its workers while they traveled a mile and a half apart along a coastal road in Gaza. Israel apologized for its “tragic mistake.” Nevertheless, the WCK has called for an independent investigation into the attack. No results have emerged from an Israeli army-announced investigation of its own.
The deaths have forced other aid organizations to suspend their efforts to feed Gazans, who have been relying on insufficient air drops.
Biden told Netanyahu that “the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable,” the White House said, summarizing their conversation. White House spokesman John Kirby said Biden was “shaken” by the attack.
Biden has been appealing to Netanyahu for months to let up on the feverish pace of the war, whose primary thrust has been from the air. The Israeli objective was to avoid unnecessary casualties since the terrorists were hiding in tunnels under hospitals, homes and businesses that would have made it more difficult for soldiers on the ground to root them out.
But Netanyahu has ignored Biden, arguing of the need to wipe out the terrorists on Israel’s border. Netanyahu has been the target of major Israeli demonstrations calling on him to resign and for the Knesset, or parliament, to call for new elections.
The president “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the White House summary said. “He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”
There was no indication of the steps Washington would take if its directives weren’t put into effect.
The Israeli leader also opposes Biden’s repeated calls for a two-state solution as a way to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, not only in Gaza but in the more heavily occupied-West Bank. It will be difficult for Israelis to accept a Palestinian state on its border because of its previous experience with Gaza, when Israel withdrew from the enclave in 2005 only to see it taken over by Hamas in 2007.
Israelis fear another terrorist state on their border as well as having to deal with still another Iranian-sponsored terrorist outfit on their northern frontier with Lebanon, Hezbollah.
“There is a contrary move, an attempt to force, ram down our throats a Palestinian state, which will be another terror haven, another launching ground for an attempt, as was the Hamas state in Gaza,” Netanyahu told visiting Republican lawmakers Thursday, according to The New York Times. “That is opposed by Israelis, overwhelmingly.”
Republicans side more completely with Israel’s conduct of the war.
It must have been difficult for Biden to come down hard on Israel, with which he has felt an affinity during his 36 years as a senator, vice president for eight years and now as president. He has been steadfast in Israel’s policy in Gaza since the war erupted after Hamas invaded Israel Oct. 7, savagely killing 1,200 Israeli hostages and taking about 250 others hostage. About 100 remain in terrorist captivity.
One reason Biden finally may have given in and warned Netanyahu is that the president told a guest at a White House gathering of Muslim community members Tuesday evening that his wife, Jill, had told him about the war, “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” The Washington Post reported.
Good wifely advice. It’s been more than enough. There are other, quieter ways, of getting rid of Hamas. Israel knows how to do that.
Richard C. Gross, who covered war and peace in Israel, the American military at the Pentagon, was foreign editor of United Press International and was the opinion page editor of The Baltimore Sun.