‘Joe Biden is your best friend, until he isn’t’ – POLITICO

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. 

TEL AVIV — Do Israel’s Western allies really believe that the country has the right to defend itself?

Israelis aren’t sure.

To varying degrees since the military offensive was launched against Hamas, Western allies have sought to persuade Israel to curtail the campaign, and clearly some would prefer for it to be aborted altogether.

Reeling from the shock at the sheer ISIS-like savagery of the Hamas attack on kibbutzim in southern Israel, Western allies quickly embraced Israel’s right to self-defense. But many hedged this right from the get-go with caveats — some justified — about the lack of a defining post-war end goal.

There was handwringing also about the risks of the war expanding and inflaming the whole region and worry, too, that Israel might allow its anger to push it into over-reaching.

Behind the scenes, the Biden administration was urging Benjamin Netanyahu to delay launching the offensive — a bid to run the clock, hoping the passing of time might lead Israel to scale back its military plans.

And, of course, as the death toll in Gaza climbed, the shock of October 7 wore off for many Western allies.

France’s Emmanuel Macron was the first major Western leader to call for a cessation of hostilities, making him an unsurprising outlier. But others have not been far behind, and now they hope to stretch the four-day truce for as long as possible, which would provide further time and opportunity to pile pressure on Israel to halt the military campaign for good. Or at least scale it back considerably.

Characteristically, U.S. President Joe Biden has been inconsistent, trying to have it all ways.

Two weeks ago, when asked what the chances were for a cease-fire in Gaza, Biden was in warrior mode and dismissive. “None. No possibility,” he said.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post on November 18, he wrote: “We stand firmly with the Israeli people as they defend themselves against the murderous nihilism of Hamas.” He highlighted how he’d quickly gone to Israel after October 7 to “reaffirm to the world that the United States has Israel’s back.”

“As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace. To Hamas’s members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves,” he wrote.

But less than a week later, while in Nantucket, Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, that was all forgotten and Biden struck a different chord saying “the chances are real” that the pause could open the door to a longer cease-fire.

No worries there about how Hamas exploits every cease-fire for war preparations.

Admittedly, Biden hasn’t talked yet of a permanent cease-fire and he’s linked any truces to the release of hostages. But the change in the mood music was striking and has been noted in Israel, where there’s rising anxiety that the Biden administration is making electoral calculations swayed by progressive Democrats, Arab leaders and Europeans.

The problem with that is Hamas doesn’t really want a permanent end to hostilities, Israelis argue. Just ask Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ political bureau and a man some once suggested was a moderate, they say. Speaking on Lebanese television in October he applauded the slaughter of October 7 and promised that Hamas “will do this again and again.”

“There will be a second, a third, a fourth,” he added. “Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished,” he declared.

Israelis question whether the United States — as well as most other Western allies — really understand that Hamas isn’t interested in political negotiations about a two-state solution. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” means what it says. No Jewish state.

Politicians across the ideological spectrum in Israel are always careful to praise Biden publicly, but most are suspicious of the U.S. president, noting his inconstancy and his long-established pattern to talk grandiosely but act cautiously. And then there’s his habit of switching positions.

In fact, the quip doing the rounds in Tel Aviv is that “Biden is your best friend, until he isn’t.”

Others note the U.S. leader tends to go by his gut instincts when making decisions. “Does that mean we’re hostages to the fortunes of his digestive tract?” an aide to a member of Israel’s security cabinet remarked to me last week. He asked not to be named, not wanting to impact his boss’s relations with the White House.

While some Israelis fault Netanyahu for reaching too easily for Holocaust comparisons and of failing to define a day-after governance plan for Gaza when Hamas is no more, the one overwhelming message from most is that this time Hamas must be defeated comprehensively, and that a truncated military campaign would in effect be a win for Hamas.

Opinion polls bear that out with Israeli attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more hawkish than at any time in recent memory. Only 24.5 percent of Israeli Jews favor peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority – a fall from 47.6 in favor in September.

In a survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute before the current pause, only 10 percent of Israeli Jews said they would support a pause in fighting to exchange hostages.

Meanwhile, 44 percent said they wanted the government to negotiate for the hostages’ return without any pause and 27 percent said there should be no negotiations, only fighting. And 12 percent said hostage talks should only take place when Hamas has been defeated.

Israelis do worry that international pressure will mount to such an extent that they are compelled to stop the war on Hamas far short of the war aims. A halt now or before the goal has been accomplished would be “for Yahya Sinwar [Hamas’ leader in Gaza] a victory,” says Michael Milshtein, a former head of the Department for Palestinians Affairs in Israel’s Defense Intelligence agency.

“If this war ends with Hamas’ survival, it will further weaken the PLO-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and we can kiss goodbye to any serious talks in the future about a two-state solution or a political settlement with the Palestinians. Hamas isn’t interested in a political resolution – it wants to extinguish the state of Israel,” Milshtein adds. The only question will be when the next war will begin, he and others say.

“We have to end their capability of threatening Israel ever again,” Ophir Falk, Benjamin Netanyahu’s top foreign policy adviser, told me. “This can’t be just another cycle of violence. Almost everybody in Israel is fully united. The people in the streets and the government and the cabinet and everybody understands that this is a must thing for us to do,” he added.

So, what if the pressure mounts from Western allies for a cessation of hostilities? “No, that’s not an option,” Falk told me. “We are going to destroy Hamas. And asking us for a ceasefire would be like asking for a ceasefire after 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. It’s just not going to happen,” he added.

Pretty much across the board, Israelis from all walks of life are unequivocal: There should be no let-up in the campaign to uproot Hamas from Gaza. “This isn’t Bibi’s war; it is Israel’s war,” I have been told time and again the past month.