While the president has backed Israel’s right to defend itself since the Hamas terrorist attack, his team has increased the pressure to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.
For two months, President Biden has strongly backed Israel’s right to defend itself after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, in effect banking credibility with Jerusalem to be spent on moderating its response. But as Israeli forces push into southern Gaza, the question is when Mr. Biden’s account will be drained and the checks start to bounce.
Administration officials insist they have meaningfully influenced Israel’s actions over the last few weeks thanks to the president’s approach, and continue to do so. But the nightly phone calls between Washington and Jerusalem have turned increasingly fraught and the public messages by some of the administration’s top officials have become sharper in recent days.
The friction was evident on Tuesday when the State Department imposed visa bans on Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have committed violence against Palestinians, a rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not doing more to restrain such attacks far from the action in Gaza. At the same time, in defiance of Washington’s warnings, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel’s military would maintain security control over Gaza long after defeating Hamas.
The stakes are high for both sides. Mr. Netanyahu’s Israel needs the Biden administration’s support to continue resupplying its forces and to shield it from international pressure from other corners, including the United Nations. Mr. Biden, for his part, has become so closely associated with Israel that he effectively owns its military operation and has absorbed withering political attacks, especially from the left wing of his own party, which has accused him of enabling mass slaughter of civilians.
“The real question is: How do you, on the one hand, allow a sovereign nation like Israel to go after terrorist targets while, on the other hand, have them do so in a way that minimizes the harm to civilians?” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters this week. “And that’s really where the rubber hits the road in all of this.”
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Biden's Strategy Faces a Test as Israeli Forces Push Into Southern Gaza - The New York Times
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