ANALYSIS — The White House has been peppered with questions and criticisms for months about whether President Joe Biden has lost the ability to influence Benjamin Netanyahu as the wartime Israeli prime minister oversees a brutal war with Hamas.
The prime example is Rafah, an area in southern Gaza to which Netanyahu’s government instructed Palestinian civilians to flee at the conflict’s start. The prime minister’s war cabinet insists up to four Hamas brigades are holed up there, and has vowed for weeks to launch a major military operation in Rafah.
Yet, as pro-Palestinian protesters shout down Biden at public events and cast protest votes in Democratic presidential primaries, and a growing list of Democratic lawmakers have called for Biden to overhaul the U.S.-Israeli relationship, the Israeli threats about a Rafah invasion remain just that.
