Biden Calibrates U.S. Pressure on Netanyahu

Will it work?

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

Since the brutal October 7th Hamas assault on Israel, the Biden White House has pursued a dual track approach in its approach to the Netanyahu government. Substantively, it has offered rhetorical and material support for Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas — even if that material support has sometimes flown under the radar. Politically, the Biden White House has also periodically leaked to the press their displeasure, frustration, and exasperation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This approach has yielded mixed results at best. On the one hand, the U.S. has little love for Hamas, and so the more that Israel can degrade that violent non-state actor, the better. That said, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has been horrific, and Biden’s political attempts to distance himself from Netanyahu has yielded little but mishegoss. Still, one can understand Biden’s political and strategic logic. He is trying to simultaneously support Israel while positioning himself in his political safe space: the median position within the Democratic Party.

That makes Biden’s behavior all the more interesting this week. He gave a speech that highlighted his bona fides in combatting anti-Semitism, Biden also decided to withhold weapons shipments to Israel for the first time since October 7th. In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Biden publicly announced that he would halt some weapons shipments if Netanyahu ignored Biden’s warnings and went full-bore into Rafah:

President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt some shipments of American weapons to Israel – which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza – if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive interview on “Erin Burnett OutFront,” referring to 2,000-pound bombs that Biden paused shipments of last week.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said.

What prompted Biden’s decision? The New York Times’ Peter Baker explains:

The message was not getting through. Not through the phone calls or the emissaries or the public statements or the joint committee meetings. And so, frustrated that he was being ignored, President Biden chose a more dramatic way of making himself clear to Israeli leaders. He stopped sending the bombs.

Mr. Biden’s decision to pause the delivery of 3,500 bombs to Israel was meant to convey a powerful signal that his patience has limits. While insisting that his support for the Jewish state remains “ironclad,” Mr. Biden for the first time since the Gaza war erupted last fall opted to use his power as Israel’s chief arms supplier to demonstrate his discontent.

The hold on the bombs represents a significant turning point in the 76-year-old relationship between the United States and Israel, historically one of the closest security partnerships in the world. But it may not necessarily be a breaking point. The Biden administration is still allowing most other weapons to be sent to Israel, and in fact officials emphasized that no final decision has even been made on the bombs that are currently in limbo.

There are actually two Biden decisions to analyze here: the initial decision to freeze the arms shipment, and the subsequent decision by Biden to say so out loud.