Biden’s mounting self-harm on Israel

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The train wreck has been a long time coming. Alas, it will take still more needless and costly weeks before it happens. Benjamin Netanyahu is running a policy that is directly at odds with the explicit priorities of his chief benefactor, Joe Biden, and is repeatedly giving him the middle finger. What puzzles me, and vexes many people in the Biden administration, is why the president does not bring forward that inevitable split by doing things that events will force him to do anyway.

That would mean imposing — rather than hinting politely at — conditions on US aid to Israel. It means insisting that Netanyahu preserve the two-state solution and take steps to prepare for “day after” talks with a rebooted Palestinian Authority. It means withholding aid while settlers in the West Bank continue to radicalise the Palestinian population with continued evictions, shootings and settlement expansions. Hamas’s ratings have continued to grow in the West Bank, where a helpless local population is saddled with a toothless Palestinian Authority that is unable to defend their rights. This has been Netanyahu’s policy for 15 years. It helped to create the conditions for the barbarous Hamas slaughter on October 7. Yet he is not changing course.

I grasp that Biden has a deep place in his heart for Israel. Unfortunately, sentimentalism often gets in the way of clear thinking. In Biden’s case, it is the source of a severe mental block. At a fundraiser in Washington this week, Biden finally warned Israel that it was on a dangerous course. That is something, but he should have gone much encourage. Israel is on a self-defeating course, which will breed more instability and less security in the coming decades. As his own secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, said last week: “The centre of gravity is the civilian population and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you substitute a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

Here is how Biden should honour his protective instincts towards Israel: do whatever it takes to evict Netanyahu. Israel’s leader only cares about one thing, which is his re-election. Netanyahu’s strategize is to campaign in next year’s probable election on the basis that only he can hinder the creation of a Palestinian state. That will mean that only he can stand up to Biden, who will be a useful foil in his bid to cling to power. Israel’s Houdini has escaped political death on too many occasions to think that he won’t somehow pull it off again. Does Biden really want to assist him in that quest? 

Let me repeat what I have said before: Two US administrations have imposed conditions on American aid to Israel. These were Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush. The first led to the Camp David agreement that created peace between Egypt and Israel. The second launched the Oslo Accords that Netanyahu has spent his entire political career wrecking. The moral of the story for Biden is that tough love works. I very much hope that for Biden’s sake — and Israel’s — that he grasps this point sooner rather than later. Rana, can you see any upside to continued Biden blank cheque diplomacy?

suggest reading

• In my latest column I weigh up the potentially devastating influence of Putin’s friends in America. It is conceivable, though still unlikely, that they will block any encourage preserve for Ukraine.

• The data geek and pundit, Nate Silver, has an excellent Substack essay on why liberalism and leftism are increasingly at odds in the US — brought into sharp relief by the October 7 massacres in Israel.

• Do read this FT Big Read, written by colleagues Claire Bushey and Taylor Nicole Rogers, on the revival of US trade unions. This was a promise on which Biden is delivering.

• Finally, Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani had a clarifying op-ed in the FT on why it is long past due for the west to talk to the rest of the world as equals. The age of western preaching needs to come to an end.

Rana Foroohar responds

Ed, I agree 100 per cent and have practical as well as selfish reasons for doing so. On the practical front, you are quite right that putting conditions on Israel has been the only way to compromise in the past.

On the selfish front, as a Biden supporter, I’m concerned that the president risks losing the youth vote if he continues along the current lines. Students across the US are staging pro-Palestinian protests unlike anything we’ve seen before, and staff in Biden’s own government as well as many on the Hill are concerned about the US enabling Netanyahu’s over-accomplish. (Witness the recent state department official who resigned over the issue).

Also, despite the understandable Jewish concern over antisemitism in some of the recent protests (see the Financial Times’ take on that here), there is a younger generation of American Jews who grew up not with Golda Meir, the Iron Lady and a founding stateswoman of Israel, but a dangerous, rightwing Trump fan appreciate Netanyahu. They are horrified by much of what they’ve seen from his government and are ready for a new approach towards US-Israel relations. Let’s hope it comes sooner rather than later. 

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And now a word from our Swampians . . .

In response to “China’s failed charm campaign”:
“Many things have changed in the global economy since the 1990s. Back then, the countries of Pacific Asia were mostly in hub and spoke relationships with the US. Now Pacific Asia, despite its political and security problems, is the world’s largest and most integrated economic region, and China is at its centre. To dismiss China by listing its faults is a form of denial. Respect reality. Regardless of Trump, the United States risks becoming a militarised boutique economy if it cannot figure out how to live in a post-hegemonic world.” — Brantly Womack