As we have said before, President Biden deserves much credit for America’s contributions heretofore to Israel’s war effort against Hamas. With Hezbollah and its hundreds of thousands of rockets and Iran with its advanced military technologies lurking in the background, America’s deployment of two really powerful Aircraft Carrier battle groups to the Middle East to keep them honest was no small thing. Similar is some of the specialized weaponry the U.S. has made available.
This is not to say Israel was lost without the American ships and military equipment, only that it was an important signal to Hamas’s friends as to what they could expect if they were even thinking about intervening in the conflict.
And since October, Mr. Biden has been supportive in many other ways as well. He has sided with Israel in disputes over numbers of casualties and responsibility for bombings of hospitals and other ostensible civilian facilities. While we believe that he merely went with the truth, that is not always the guiding principle in international politics and the fact that he invariably went with Israel was important and probably decisive in several instances.
However, there is no identity of interests between the U.S. and Israel and some of the differences are moving ever closer to the surface. Thus, while we are aware of Mr. Biden’s penchant for a so-called “two-state solution” to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, this is not shared by Prime Minister Netanyahu. Mr. Biden has gone as far as to say he wanted to see Gaza turned over to the PA for a merger with the West Bank. This notion is anathema to the Prime Minister, who sees little difference between Hamas and the PA’s Fatah. Indeed, he points to PA president Mahmoud Abbas’ fulsome praise for the Hamas Oct.7 attack on Israel.
While Mr. Biden and the Prime Minister share a desire to limit civilian Palestinian casualties, Mr. Biden sometimes seems not completely satisfied with Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts in this regard.
In addition, it appears that while the President still subscribes to the notion that Hamas had to be taken out, he seems more willing to trade hostages for ceasefires than Mr. Netanyahu is. Indeed, Mr. Netanyahu keeps emphasizing that after the current spate of ceasefires, Israel will reengage with Hamas even more strongly than before. Mr. Biden also has pushed for ceasefires to allow food and other supplies to get through to Gazan civilians.
While much of this is somewhat old news, there were two interesting new developments. For one thing it is being reported by the New York Post that President Biden apologized to some prominent Muslim-American leaders for publicly questioning the accuracy of the death toll being reported by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health. “I’m sorry, I’m disappointed in myself,” he reportedly said. Reportedly, he had previously said “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
President Biden has also been reported to be somewhat unsure of whether to condition aid to Israel. Last Friday at a press conference Mr. Biden was holding, some Democratic congressmen called for conditions to be placed on aid to Israel. The President responded: “Well, I think it’s a worthwhile thought, but I don’t think if I started off with that we’d ever gotten to where we are today.”
When National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked if the President was open to the idea of conditioning aid to Israel Sullivan would only say, “He is going to continue to focus on what is going to generate results.”
A definite maybe at best.
