Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan on Friday for postwar Gaza, revealing that Israel would maintain indefinite military control and create “buffer zones” in the territory. The Israeli prime minister is planning a military occupation, dressed up under a vague civilian administration made up of Palestinians who would be willing to collaborate, once Israel ends its devastating assault on Gaza. Netanyahu’s plan is slap in the face to Joe Biden, who has insisted for months that the US won’t accept an Israeli military occupation or attempts to seize parts of the Gaza Strip.
Since Biden announced his unconditional support for Israel after the brutal Hamas attacks on 7 October – embracing Netanyahu in a bear hug during a visit to Tel Aviv – Netanyahu has openly defied Israel’s most important ally and paid no price for it. Each week, Biden and his top aides vent at Netanyahu and his handling of the conflict, but they continue to provide US diplomatic cover and weapons shipments that allow Israel to sustain its war.
Last week, days before Netanyahu announced his postwar plan, Washington vetoed the latest UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It was the third time the US has used its veto to protect Israel from a UN resolution since October – and only Britain abstained on the latest measure, while the 13 other council members supported it.
A day later, on 21 February, the US once again stood nearly alone to defend Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A top state department official argued at the international court of justice in The Hague that Israel’s “very real security needs” must be considered before the court calls for its immediate withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territory. The UN general assembly asked the world court in 2022 to review the legality of Israeli policies in the occupied territories, and more than 50 states presented their views at the week-long hearings at The Hague. Only a handful of countries – including the US, Britain and Hungary – sided with Israel.
The court will take months to issue its decision, and while it doesn’t have enforcement powers, a ruling that the occupation is illegal would further isolate Israel and its international supporters like the US and UK. The ruling could also pave the way for states to impose sanctions against Israel. As Israel becomes more of an international pariah due to its occupation and subjugation of Palestinians, it will be more difficult for Washington to lecture its adversaries, especially Russia and China, on upholding international law.
Biden, a supposed foreign policy pragmatist, doesn’t seem bothered that the US is one of the few states that continues to wholeheartedly sustain Israel’s war on Gaza. In fact, Biden has staked his political future on his support for Netanyahu and Israel – and Biden is losing. In this year’s presidential election, where he will most likely face Donald Trump once again, Biden has already lost support among young progressives, Black and Arab American voters, who are all rightfully angry at his refusal to restrain Israel.
Biden allies are raising the alarm that he could lose Michigan, a swing state with substantial Black, Arab and Muslim American voting blocs, because of his Middle East policies. Congressman Ro Khanna, a Biden supporter and progressive Democrat from California who has tried to mediate between Biden’s campaign and Michigan Democrats, warned his team this week: “We cannot win Michigan with status quo policy.”
And yet Biden refuses to use the significant leverage he has to force Netanyahu into accepting a permanent ceasefire: aside from providing diplomatic cover at the UN security council and other international bodies, the US is the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, providing $3.8bn in military aid per year. Without a steady supply of US weapons since October, Israel would have run out of bombs to drop on Gaza. After the Hamas attacks, Biden rushed to ask Congress to provide $14.3bn in additional arms and security assistance to Israel. That package has been stalled in Congress, but that hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from rushing weapons shipments to Israel, including tens of thousands of artillery shells and other munitions which the state department approved under emergency measures that bypassed congressional approval.
The Biden administration has consistently underplayed the leverage it has over Israel and Netanyahu. “I think that sometimes people pretend that the United States of America has a magic wand that it can wave to make any situation in the world roll out in exactly the way that we would want it to and that is never the case,” Matthew Miller, the state department spokesperson, said at a press conference on 12 February.
Miller’s flippant comment raises an important question: if Biden can’t use billions of dollars in military aid – and the ability to literally cut off Israel’s supply of bombs – to force Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, what could Biden do with a magic wand?
Rather than using its influence over Netanyahu, the Biden administration instead is trying to show Americans that he is exasperated with Netanyahu, and close to some kind of “breach” with him over Gaza. Over the past few weeks, anonymous US officials leaked a version of this story to the Washington Post, the New York Times and NBC News.
NBC’s report is the most colorful of this recent round of leaks, claiming Biden called Netanyahu an “asshole” at least three times. “He just feels like this is enough,” one of the anonymous sources told NBC. “It has to stop.”
These leaks – and the entire narrative of a US “breach” with Netanyahu – are a smokescreen since Biden refuses to use his leverage to stop the war, either by stopping weapons shipments to Israel or allowing a UN ceasefire resolution to pass without a US veto. And these leaks make Biden look weaker and help enhance Netanyahu’s position in Israel, showing that he can stand up to the US president. Biden and his aides have put themselves in the position of seeming helpless to stop Netanyahu. The best the US administration can do is wag its finger at the Israeli premier, as if he’s some kind of petulant child.
As Biden dithers, Palestinians are dying in large numbers under Israeli attacks, destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, and mass starvation. The death toll in Gaza is set to surpass 30,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children. Two days after the US veto at the security council, medical officials and human rights advocates provided the UN body with excruciating details on the collapse in Gaza – and direct US responsibility for the continued slaughter.
“There is no health system to speak of left in Gaza. Israel’s military has dismantled hospital after hospital. What remains is so little in the face of such carnage,” Christopher Lockyear, secretary general of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), told the security council on 22 February. He went on to detail that his group’s surgeons were running out of basic gauze to stop patients from bleeding out, and they have had no choice but to carry out amputations without anesthesia on children.
“We have watched members of this council deliberate and delay while civilians die,” Lockyear said, singling out the US for using its veto three times since October to quash a ceasefire resolution.
On 23 February, a group of UN experts declared that continued weapons shipments to Israel, which would be used in Gaza, are likely to violate international law and western states should immediately stop these transfers. The advice came after a Dutch appeals court ordered the Netherlands government earlier this month to halt the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, saying there was “clear risk” the equipment would be used to violate international humanitarian law.
But that advice is falling on deaf ears in Washington, as did many previous warnings that the US is violating international law and could eventually be found complicit in war crimes or even genocide, because of its unwavering support and weapons shipments to Israel.
While Biden complains about the petulant Israeli leader who won’t listen, his presidency is now at risk. It’s a self-inflicted wound that Biden could have avoided by standing up to Netanyahu months ago.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University
