Netanyahu’s march on Rafah set to grind Biden’s red line into the dust
The Israeli PM and the US president are at odds and haven’t spoken for a month.
When President Biden landed in Israel 11 days after the October 7 attacks, he stepped off the plane and enveloped Benjamin Netanyahu in a bear hug. He then promised to support Israel with the full might of the US military machine.
The US President believed that by backing Israel to the hilt, he would be able to restrain his old acquaintance as he unleashed retribution on Hamas for the terrorist atrocity that killed more than 1200 Israelis.
The Israeli Prime Minister had other plans. In the five months since then, the Israeli leader has continued to take American support while ignoring what the US President wants. Biden has been unable to persuade him to speed the flow of aid to starving civilians in Gaza. Netanyahu has refused to start preparing a political transition under which the Palestinian Authority will take control of the territory. He undermined the President’s predictions for a ceasefire and hostage release deal before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began last week. Now, in defiance of Biden’s stated “red line”, he has approved plans for an assault on Rafah, in southern Gaza, where more than a million displaced Palestinian civilians are sheltering.
Biden may well be asking himself the question that Bill Clinton once reportedly voiced after an unsatisfactory meeting with Netanyahu: “Who’s the f..king superpower here?”
Few world leaders have known each other for as long as Biden, 81, and Netanyahu, 74. At the moment their relationship is arguably the most important personal dynamic in world politics and, as the past week has shown, it is unravelling.
They first met in 1982, when Netanyahu was a 32-year-old Israeli deputy ambassador in Washington, and Biden was a 39-year-old junior senator and a rising star. Since then the bond has sometimes been convivial and sometimes testy. Many Democrat politicians view Netanyahu with profound suspicion but he used to have an obvious rapport with Biden, despite their many disagreements. Biden once gave Netanyahu a photograph with the inscription: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love ya.”
During his first presidential visit to Israel in July 2022, Biden did not hide his satisfaction that the centrist Yair Lapid was in office. But he still made a point, upon landing at Ben Gurion airport, of departing from protocol to warmly embrace Netanyahu, then leader of opposition, on the tarmac.
That friendship since seems to have evaporated. Netanyahu has not visited the Biden White House and received an invitation only in September, which was seen as a snub. Yet when Benny Gantz, a minister in the war cabinet and Netanyahu’s political rival, flew to Washington recently, he met all the senior members of the administration below Biden, including Vice-President Kamala Harris. The President hasn’t spoken to Netanyahu since the middle of February.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and aid agencies say famine is around the corner. After months of quiet and apparently ineffective pressure on Netanyahu, the Biden administration is signalling a change of approach.
This month, after the State of the Union address, Biden was overheard saying to a senator: “I told him, Bibi –- and don’t repeat this – but you and I are going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting.” On Monday a US intelligence agency, in its annual threat assessment, took the unusual step of stating that “Netanyahu’s viability as leader … may be in jeopardy”.
On Tuesday, a “senior Israeli official”, which in this case meant Netanyahu, was quoted as saying: “We expect our friends to act to overthrow the terror regime of Hamas and not the elected government in Israel”.
Two days later the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer – a Biden loyalist, a noted defender of Israel and America’s most senior Jewish politician – laid into Netanyahu, calling on Israel to hold new elections and replace him.
On Friday, Biden waded in, saying that Schumer made a “good speech” that “expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans”.
“I do think the President is running out of patience,” said Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator who visited the Gaza border this year. “To my mind he’s exercised much more patience than is warranted, because he’s seen time and time again that his requests to Netanyahu have been either ignored or outright rebuffed.”
The administration’s options for increasing leverage on Netanyahu include enforcing a national security memorandum, which Israel is due to sign by next Sunday, requiring countries that receive US military aid to facilitate humanitarian assistance, slow-walking or suspending weapons supplies, and using its UN vote to advocate for a ceasefire – instead of shielding Israel with its veto power as it has done so far. For now the expectation in Israel is that the US will continue arms shipments, while targeting Netanyahu politically and personally.
There are nearly six million Jewish adults in the US, about 2.4 per cent of the population. Of these, about seven in 10 lean towards the Democratic Party. Most secular American Jews have for decades dependably supported the Democrats, while more religious Jews tend to vote Republican.
This split has deepened since the rise of Donald Trump, who styled himself the most pro-Israeli president of all time, and moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In 2020, Trump won 30 per cent of the Jewish vote, the highest for any Republican since Ronald Reagan.
Sam Markstein, national political director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, said that after October 7, he had given Biden credit for his initial response to the attacks. Now the President was “caving to the growing far-left progressive pressure in the Democratic Party” in an effort to “shore up [the] growing anti-Israel base in the party”.
Hank Sheinkopf, an American political consultant, said that by criticising Netanyahu, Democrats like Schumer were appealing to young voters and others who tended to be pro-Palestinian, and who – while they were unlikely to vote for Trump – might otherwise stay home in November.
Though they are winning some Jewish votes, the Republican Party’s unflinching support for Israel is also rooted in the priorities of their evangelical Christian base, who have a deep connection to the state of Israel. Many believe that the establishment of modern Israel is connected to biblical prophecy.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, is under pressure from his allies and enemies alike to finish Hamas. Large swathes of Israel blame him for security failures that allowed Hamas to break through the Gaza border and commit mass murder. Standing up to the US plays well with his base, and allows him to show strength.
“One of the most difficult jobs for an Israeli prime minister is being able to say no to the president of the United States,” said a veteran adviser to Netanyahu. “You’re saying no at the same time to the most powerful man in the world and to Israel’s closest ally. But the prime minister of Israel has to look out for Israel’s interests. Netanyahu knows how to say no to the president of the United States.”
He has clashed with US presidents before. During his first term in the late 1990s he had a stormy relationship with Clinton, who pressured him to continue the Oslo process with the Palestinians that had been initiated by his predecessors Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres from the Labor Party. Clinton later admitted that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to help Peres win the 1996 elections against Netanyahu.
When Netanyahu returned to office in 2009, Barack Obama was in the White House. For the next eight years their relationship deteriorated until, in 2015, Netanyahu defied Obama, accepting an invitation from the Republicans to address the joint houses of congress, where he argued, unsuccessfully, against the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Nevertheless, despite the personal acrimony, Obama near the end of his time in office signed a 10-year agreement with Israel committing $US38bn in military aid.
While the coming months will be crucial in determining both the outcome of the war in Gaza and Netanyahu’s own fate, at the back of everyone’s mind is the US election in November. Should Biden be re-elected, he intends to implement plans for bringing peace in the Middle East, with Saudi help. He sees Netanyahu as an obstacle and hopes for an election in Israel as well, which if the current polls hold, will bring about a change of government and Netanyahu’s departure.
It is less clear what a Trump victory would mean for the region. In his previous term, Trump’s policies aligned closely with Netanyahu’s priorities. He withdrew from the Iran deal and recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. But he is furious with Netanyahu for congratulating Biden after the 2020 election on his win, a win that Trump claims was illegitimate. The two men have not spoken for more than three years and since the war with Hamas began, Trump has barely mentioned it.
Many in Israel and America still believe that the long-standing alliance between the two countries can withstand personal rancour between the leaders.
“There’s no questioning Joe Biden’s support for Israel,” says an Israeli government official who is close to Netanyahu. “When he says he’s a Zionist, he means it. And he may be the last Zionist president America will have, certainly from the Democratic Party. That makes it even more difficult when we disagree with him on policy.”
The Sunday Times
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