As the war in Gaza grinds on into its sixth month, cracks are showing in the once unequivocally united front between Israel and the United States. Meantime, hunger threatens Gaza’s civilians, who, through displacement, disease and death, have already paid a horrible price.
President Biden’s open declarations that Israel has failed to limit civilian casualties and enable aid to reach Palestinians; a major speech by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) that blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and U.S. tolerance of an Israeli-opposed U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution — these recent events have soured the relationship between the two countries as seldom before.
The tension is based in reality. Neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Netanyahu is popular at home; both fear for their offices. And yet they face mutually incompatible domestic political pressures. Mr. Biden contends with the Democratic Party’s left wing, which is increasingly critical of Israel’s prosecution of the war, as well as seemingly growing impatience among the wider U.S. electorate. Mr. Netanyahu’s hold on power is hostage to a right wing that supports annexation of the West Bank, but mainstream Israelis, viewing their fight as existential, are hawkish and willing to see the war through to finish off Hamas.
The other reality is that Hamas — though badly crippled by the Israel Defense Forces — still has intact leadership commanding four battalions holed up underground. At the same time, objective conditions for the 2 million or so people in Gaza, most displaced from ruined homes, are horrendous. To be sure, their plight is partly Hamas’s fault for starting a war in which they could not or would not protect so many women and children from dying, either in Israeli airstrikes or, potentially, food shortages that could soon lead to widespread starvation. Nevertheless, for Israel, protecting innocent noncombatants is imperative, strategically and morally.
There are signs that the two countries, for all the recent drama, might be starting to shift from political theater to mature statesmanship. Netanyahu advisers have agreed to reschedule a meeting with top Biden administration officials that the prime minister called off last Monday in a show of fury over U.S. abstention on the U.N. resolution.
Meanwhile, the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, did hold businesslike talks with Mr. Biden’s national security team on a subject that really matters: how, or if, Israel can attack the remaining Hamas forces in Rafah — a fight Israelis, in government or otherwise, overwhelmingly believe they must wage — without causing a humanitarian catastrophe for the million-plus people who fled to that town from earlier fighting in the rest of Gaza.
What emerged was a clear statement from the administration that left room for the United States to countenance a Rafah offensive — but only if it included “an achievable, verifiable plan to look after the safety and security of the 1.5 million Gazans that have sought refuge there,” as national security spokesman John Kirby put it on Wednesday.
Such pressure is crucial. A preferable course in the short run would be to negotiate a six-week truce with Hamas, during which the militants would release at least some of their hostages and relief supplies could flow into Gaza more safely. However, Hamas, possibly sensing an opportunity in the spat between the United States and Israel, balked even after Israel softened its terms and for now, at least, negotiations seem to be going nowhere.
Despite weeks of talk of an “imminent” Israeli assault on Rafah, such a move would take extensive preparation and could probably not begin for at least a month; no matter what happens, Israel has time to increase stepped-up levels of aid beginning to flow through Israeli checkpoints.
Israel does not, however, have unlimited time to finish this war and all the enormous suffering that goes along with it. No one — Israeli society, Gaza’s suffering civilians, the hostages still languishing in Hamas’s tunnels — can afford a stalemate. For all his tough criticism, Mr. Biden is still a close friend of Israel and willing to take political risks to support it. Israel’s future might depend on understanding that, when someone like that offers advice, it’s wise to listen.
