President Joe Biden speaks to more than 1,000 service members to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 during a remembrance ceremony at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Sept. 11, 2023. (Ian Morales/U.S. Army)
When President Biden cautioned Israel this week that it was losing international support due to the war in Gaza, he could just as well have been warning that his own administration also has a lot to lose.
Elected three years ago as the self-described most experienced foreign policy president in history, Biden promised to reclaim the mantle of global leadership as “a strong and trusted partner for peace, progress and security.” Following the isolationist Trump years, he proclaimed, “America is back.”
There have been ups and downs since then, from the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco to the return to primacy at NATO, a successful mobilization of aid for Ukraine and a jittery coexistence with China.
Now, there is acknowledgment within Biden’s administration that his unwavering support for Israel’s right to destroy Hamas - even as he acknowledges Israeli excesses and presses the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be more protective of innocent Palestinian lives - could impose a price on the president’s standing at home and abroad.
“Diplomatic cost can be an intangible thing,” a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “On balance, you want countries to look favorably on the United States, to be willing to support it, to want to cooperate.” But “when public opinion in so many countries is hostile, it makes it harder to win support on issues we care about.”
“This administration has prided itself on repairing ties across the world and working with allies and partners. It’s not something you want to see, being isolated in the region and elsewhere,” the official said. “That’s part of the message to Israel - it’s not even helpful to them if we are feeling such pressure. Which we are.”
The most obvious isolation is in international forums such as the United Nations, where the United States has been virtually alone in opposing Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. This week, as the 193-member General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a similar measure, the administration was joined by only nine other countries - including only Czechia among NATO members - in voting no.
Being in a small U.N. minority, especially where Israel is concerned, is nothing new for Washington. “On this issue, the United States stands pretty much alone, and has for a very long time,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. Since the early 1970s, the United States has vetoed dozens of resolutions deemed critical of Israel.
Massive Israeli retaliation for attacks by militant Islamists is also well-trodden ground. “Although the scale of the Hamas attack” on Oct. 7, when 1,200 Israelis were brutally killed and about 240 hostages were taken, “was more awful than anything Israel has ever seen, the pattern whereby Israel reacts and keeps on reacting even though we all ask them to stop, that’s not new,” said a senior European diplomat, also speaking on the condition of anonymity about the ongoing conflict.
“I don’t think they’ve lost credibility,” the diplomat said of the Biden administration. “The Israelis didn’t want to do the pauses,” in combat operations that ultimately allowed many of the hostages to be freed, or “to let aid in” to suffering Gaza civilians. “[Secretary of State Antony] Blinken and Biden got them to do so. . . . They’re small things; it would be much better if there were more things and bigger things.”
It is not just friendly foreign partners who are urging the Biden administration to do more. Some White House, State Department and U.S. aid officials have now gone public with their objections to Biden’s unwavering support for Israel, arguing that the Gaza conflict could have larger ramifications for U.S. leadership.
In its efforts to woo the Global South away from Moscow and China, Washington has called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a colonial war of aggression. Yet for many, Israel’s war on Gaza looks virtually the same. “Israel was attacked, and it has a right to self-defense,” Daalder said. “But it is doing so in a territory it occupies, and which the entire world thinks is occupied territory. On the one hand, we’re trying to get other countries to oppose what Russia is doing in Ukraine, while on the other hand we’re trying to have them support what Israel is doing in Gaza.”
“It makes the argument harder to maintain,” he said.
“Even war has rules,” said U.N. General Assembly President Dennis Francis, of Trinidad and Tobago, in opening this week’s session on a cease-fire resolution, “and it is imperative that we prevent any deviation from these principles and values, the validity of which resides in their universal application.”
Some of the harshest words have come from close U.S. partners in the Middle East. It was “a despicable sign of double standards,” Egypt’s U.N. Ambassador Osama Abdelkhalek told the assembly, when those who call for ending aggression and occupation and “for respecting international humanitarian law in specific cases . . . unfortunately and shamelessly, they turn their backs on . . . other situations, especially when concerning Palestinians.”
U.S. officials acknowledge that the administration’s support for Israel’s right to continue its siege of Gaza has set it apart from partner countries. But they insist they have not seen any nations halt cooperation or change their stances on unrelated matters.
They acknowledge that such spillover effects could occur as the conflict deepens, but cite a potential positive effect: that America is showing its resolve to stand by friends, even when it is unpopular. And they attribute much of the Arab criticism to those governments’ need to placate their own citizens’ anger with vocal support for the plight of Palestinians.
But key partners in the region are deeply unhappy, potentially scuttling a path forward.
Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi of Jordan, a critical ally in Washington’s goal of building a long-term peace between Israelis and Palestinians, has been among the most publicly outspoken. “How could anybody talk about the future of Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left once this aggression is over?” Safadi told a recent conference in Bahrain.
“People are being killed day in and day out,” he said. “And then we’re supposed to come and clean the mess after Israel. That’s not going to happen.”
The administration’s position, while holding fast to its insistence that Israel no lasting peace would come to Gaza until Hamas is militarily destroyed, has steadily evolved since the Oct. 7 attacks.
“The instinct on day one was to be very clear about Israel’s right to self-defense,” the senior administration official said. “[B]ut even from the start, we took the position that when Israel responded” it must do so “consistent with the rules of war, allowing humanitarian assistance in and doing as much as possible to limit civilian casualties.”
The latter message became even more pronounced “as conditions deteriorated” and Gaza came under withering Israel air and ground attacks, with a rising civilian death toll and the enclave increasingly turned to rubble. Washington began “hearing complaints and criticism, not just from friends, but all over the world. Not just internationally, but domestically,” the official said.
In visits to the region, Blinken was increasingly outspoken in his insistence that Israel needed to show not just the intent, but the actions necessary to protect civilians. Vice President Harris, after meetings in Dubai with Arab leaders earlier this month said that “As Israel defends itself, it matters how. The United States is unequivocal: International humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”
This week, Biden warned that Israel was “starting to lose [international] support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place,” and intimated that a change in Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government might prove the answer.
The president’s comments brought a flood of questions as to whether Biden was accusing Israel of war crimes, or perhaps misspoke.
“I don’t think Biden made a mistake,” Daalder said. “I think he believes this. . . . He’s been quite clear that he is absolutely fed up with the Israeli government.” “The question for Biden is at what point do you say ‘enough?’” he added.
The European diplomat put it another way. “I think Biden has probably been listened to more than one might have expected. Which isn’t to say Netanyahu is listening to him a lot.”
Netanyahu has not hesitated in the past to thumb his nose at U.S. presidents, most memorably when he addressed a joint session of Congress in 2015.
The appearance had been arranged by the Republican House leadership without the knowledge of the Obama administration, and Republican lawmakers applauded loudly as Netanyahu denounced U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, a major foreign policy initiative of President Barack Obama. Democrats called it an “insult,” and many, including then-Vice President Biden, refused to attend the speech.
While Republican lawmakers are now criticizing Biden for what they charge is an attempt to interfere in Israel’s own policies, some regional experts and former U.S. foreign policy officials have urged the president to be more bold in showing the rest of the world that he can follow words with actions where the Palestinians are concerned.
Biden pledged during his campaign to reopen the U.S. consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Liberation Office in Washington, both closed by President Donald Trump, and to reverse the former president’s rejection of a U.S. legal opinion on the illegality of West Bank settlements. Biden has done none of those things. As a longtime supporter of Israel, “I don’t think he has to be on the defensive about this,” Daalder said of Biden. “He’s earned his stripes.”
Missy Ryan contributed to this report.
