Netanyahu and Israel must win. But for Biden, too, almost everything hinges on this war
US president is anxious over Israel’s conduct as it responds to the Hamas massacre: his reelection, regional vision, and belief in winning within the ‘law of wars’ are on the line
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Joe Biden seems to have found his stride in the wake of the October 7 attacks.
Facing dreadful polls back home, and growing whispers in his own party about the wisdom of putting the 80-year-old up for reelection, Biden has suddenly become the right man at the right time.
During his six-hour visit to Israel on Wednesday, Biden spoke forcefully, and often eloquently, about the horrors of the Hamas assault on Israeli towns and kibbutzim; on the painful associations the slaughter raised for Jews around the world; on America’s moral and material support for its grieving ally.
It wasn’t only Biden, the leader of the free world, who showed up for Israel in Tel Aviv. It was also “Uncle Joe,” the folksy and avuncular Irish-American local politician with an ability to connect with seemingly everyone, from world leaders to the common man. He transformed the grave mien of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Issac Herzog into smiles moments after stepping off his plane. He hugged Rachel Edri as she regaled him with her tale of feeding terrorists cookies in her home until they were eliminated by a SWAT team. And he drew on his own pain of losing suddenly his wife and baby daughter in a car crash to offer a heartfelt message of comfort to devastated Israelis.
But throughout Biden’s public statements and meetings, there was an unmistakable refrain of anxiety over the course that the war could take.
And Biden has good reason to be apprehensive.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Everything is riding on the outcome of Israel’s response to the unprecedented Hamas attacks – Biden’s own political future, his vision for the Middle East, and the very idea that evil can be defeated by the liberal way of war.
Unhappy progressives
Every time Biden – or his top aides – was in front of a microphone in Tel Aviv, they were sure to mention US concern for Palestinian civilians, and the imperative for Israel to do everything it can to avoid harming them.
“The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people,” Biden insisted.
“The Palestinian people are suffering greatly as well,” the president said. “We mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian lives.”
The world is watching, he told Netanyahu in front of the cameras. “Israel has a value set like the United States does and other democracies, and they’re looking to see what we’re going to do.”
It’s not that the US is exactly concerned about IDF tactics per se. When US forces have been forced to fight against entrenched enemies in Middle Eastern cities, civilian casualties are inevitably high. US-led coalition and Iraqi forces killed thousands of civilians as they wrested control of west Mosul from ISIS fighters in 2017.
The war crimes accusations from international organizations and the response from the US military were reminiscent of the discourse around Israeli operations against terrorists embedded among civilians.
“With their crude targeting abilities, [US-backed forces’] weapons wreaked havoc in densely populated west Mosul, where large groups of civilians were trapped in homes or makeshift shelters,” wrote Amnesty International. “Even in attacks that seem to have struck their intended military target, the use of unsuitable weapons or failure to take other necessary precautions resulted in needless loss of civilian lives and in some cases constituted disproportionate attacks.”
An Air Force general responded to the charges with a defense that could have come from the mouth of an Israeli officer: “We use the most precise and [discriminating] weapons that we can ever use and are available in the world to avoid targeting civilians.”
He stressed that civilian casualties are “going to happen, just based on the nature of the war, but I can tell you that to be effective we’ve got to support the Iraqi security forces and that’s what we’ve done.”
What Biden is actually concerned about is the fact that Israeli operations are given disproportionate scrutiny back at home and around the world, which could badly complicate matters for him.
Biden’s love of and concern for Israel and the Jewish people is genuine and long-standing. But at the same time, he is facing a likely election rematch against the Democrats’ bogeyman, Donald Trump.
He will need every constituency he can get. Most polls show Biden one percentage point ahead of Trump if the general election were held now, with some showing Trump leading.
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has never been an enthusiastic backer of the president. He was the establishment choice in 2020 to keep Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren from capturing the Democratic nomination.
Biden promised explicitly in his campaign platform to reopen the PLO mission in the capital and the US Jerusalem consulate to the Palestinians, to advance policies around a two-state solution, and to oppose settlement expansion. He has delivered on none of those pledges, and his statements of firm support for Israel, as IDF forces pound the Gaza Strip, are sure to further frustrate progressives, for whom support for the Palestinians is a core priority.
Moreover, with independent far-left professor Cornel West polling around 5 percent, disillusioned progressives have a home for a protest vote, which might be just enough to push Trump over the line.
So he has to keep them on board without exposing himself to attacks from Trump and other Republicans about being unreliable in his backing of Israel, or being complicit in potential IDF military struggles for seeking to limit Israel’s freedom of action.
Biden’s ambitious Middle East vision
The course the war takes will also the determine the viability of Biden’s vision of a pro-American Middle East bloc.
His administration had been eager to take the next steps in the bipartisan American project of moving out of the Middle East to focus on China, and later Russia. The goal was to put the Iran nuclear issue to rest by striking a new long-term deal, place human rights at the center of relations with Arab allies, and end the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Though Biden accomplished the last goal, he has learned the lesson that past US presidents have also learned the hard way – America cannot disengage from the Middle East.
As energy prices spiked in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and conflicts in Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere demanded his attention, Biden changed his tune. In July 2022, he flew to Israel and Saudi Arabia to “start a new and more promising chapter of America’s engagement there.”
His administration also began putting its back into multilateral frameworks, like the Negev Forum, the I2U2, and the Aqaba/Sharm el-Sheikh talks. After initially refusing to even say the name, the White House eventually committed to expanding the Abraham Accords.
Then in March, Saudi Arabia and Iran reached a deal in Beijing. It was a rude awakening for the Americans. If they leave a vacuum in the Middle East, China, Iran and Russia will fill it, they realized.
In September, the US and G20 allies announced an ambitious rail and shipping corridor linking India with the Middle East, Israel and Europe, a counterweight to the Chinese Belt and Road project. Biden said on the trip that it could create “a future of greater peace, greater security and greater prosperity.”
“This can be the beginning of even a greater era of cooperation,” he predicted.
Biden’s entire regional vision – which has become an integral part of his strategy against America’s main adversaries, China, Russia, and Iran – now hangs in the balance.
The Biden Administration also leaned heavily into attempts to bring about a Saudi-Israel normalization deal, which would require American defense commitments to Riyadh, keeping the Saudis in America’s embrace for the long term.
Biden’s entire regional vision – which has become an integral part of his strategy against America’s main adversaries, China, Russia, and Iran – now hangs in the balance. The pro-Western Arab countries – with the exception of Qatar – all despise Hamas and have no problem with Israel doing what it wants to the group, but they are more concerned right now with the sentiment of the street. Antisemitism is rampant in these countries, and the Palestinian cause remains dear to the public.
Arab leaders, already criticized domestically for being in bed with the Americans and Zionists, cannot afford to be seen as party to the deaths of thousands of Palestinians as millions more Arabs watch the images on their phones and in their living rooms.
Better to drop out of any emerging multilateral initiatives with Israel, they will reason, than put their own regimes and personal survival on the line.
Meanwhile, Russia and China would be happy to step in if those pro-Western Arab leaderships abandon US projects, and to offer weapons and money with no human rights demands, untainted by support for Israel’s war against Hamas.
The law of wars
There is an even larger issue at stake in this war: whether liberal democracies can defeat regimes and organizations that reject the values Biden holds dear.
That fight has already been underway since February of last year. Under Biden, the US has committed more military aid to Ukraine than the rest of the world combined, in an attempt to help the pro-Western government in Kyiv hold off Vladimir Putin’s attempts to force the country back into his orbit.
Now a war rages on another of democracy’s frontiers. To Biden, this is an opportunity to prove that the democratic way is not only more decent and just, but is actually stronger because of the very values it is trying to protect.
“You’re also a democracy,” Biden said in Israel. “Like the United States, you don’t live by the rules of terrorists. You live by the rule of law. When conflicts flare, you live by the law of wars.”
“What sets us apart from the terrorists is we believe in the fundamental dignity of every human life: Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, Jew, Muslim, Christian, everyone. You can’t give up what makes you who you are. If you give that up, then the terrorists win.”
And win Israel must. If this war ends with Hamas still ruling the Gaza Strip, its primary value as an ally to Arab countries – its military reputation – will dissipate. Iran will be encouraged, as will Hezbollah, far more powerful than Hamas, to Israel’s north.
Western allies who are willing to give Israel plenty of slack right now in the hopes that the end goal – the elimination of Hamas – will justify the collateral damage, will be quick to call for an end to hostilities the next time Israel embarks on an operation. If Israel can’t win, they will reason, what justification could there be for civilian deaths?
And, of course, Netanyahu – under whose watch the Jewish people’s worst tragedy since the Holocaust was perpetrated – will see his political life end in ignominy if Israel doesn’t win. Instead of protecting Israel against Iran and forging a historic peace with Saudi Arabia, his legacy will be that of a self-serving leader whose focus on political survival blinded him to the growing threat to the civilians he was elected to protect – and of a wartime leader who botched a war with the world and entire country backing him.
According to retired IDF general Israel Ziv on Channel 12, Biden was telling Netanyahu on Wednesday: We will take care of the aftermath. Washington will help find a new arrangement to administer the Gaza Strip, and will make sure the Saudi deal is back on track. But you had better win.
The stakes couldn’t be higher on the Israeli side, but Biden has an immense amount riding on the outcome – and on the manner in which Israel achieves it.
