Inside the White House’s extraordinary week as the Israel-Gaza war started

Andrew Feinberg reports on the White House’s diplomatic efforts over the past week amid the escalating war between Israel and Hamas

President Joe Biden speaks Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, about the war between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas, as Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken listen. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (AP)

Donald Trump may have dubbed him “sleepy Joe” during his ill-fated 2020 re-election campaign, but Joe Biden was anything but sleepy on the morning of 7 October.

Hours earlier, he’d been notified of what Americans and people all around the world were waking up to early that Saturday: A brutal sneak attack on Israel by Hamas militants and an announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared his country to be “at war” just before 5am ET.

At a time when most people in Washington were just waking up and enjoying a leisurely weekend breakfast, Biden was already hard at work, huddled with advisers as information flowed into the White House through various channels.

What he was hearing left him as stunned as he’d ever been over the five decades he has been immersed in the US-Israel relationship, an immersion that began, as he often recounts, with a trip he took there not long before a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt started the 1973 Yom Kippur War with a surprise attack on 6 October of that year.

Nearly 50 years later, militants operating under the banner of Hamas had carried out another surprise attack on Israel, starting with a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza towards Tel Aviv and Jerusalem around 6.30am local time on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

Hamas militants on motorcycles and in cars and trucks attacked by land, with some proceeded by bulldozers, which took down the border fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip.

More militants landed on Israeli beaches by boat, and some even attacked by air — landing on Israeli territory in paragliders flown over the border.

Palestinians carrying their belongings flee to safer areas in Gaza City after Israeli air strikes, on October 13, 2023. (AFP via Getty Images)

Videos posted to social media accounts — some by the militants themselves, some by their victims — showed the Hamas force coming face-to-face with terrified Israeli civilians.

Some, they murdered. Others, they seized and dragged back across the Gaza border to be hostages.

The grim reports coming out of Israel were at odds with the country’s image as a security-conscious military and intelligence powerhouse. Somehow, Hamas had managed to evade the thick surveillance blanket Israel used to keep tabs on the Palestinian territory and plan the stunning attack in secret. It was an unprecedented horror for Israelis, as shocking to them as the sight of burning New York skyscrapers was to Americans on 11 September 2001.

As Biden conferred with aides, the White House informed reporters that he’d been briefed on what officials were calling “the appalling Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel” around 9.30am.

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A half-hour later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a strong condemnation of the “appalling attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israel, including civilians and civilian communities” and promised that the US would “remain in close contact” with Israeli officials.

Shortly after that, Biden finally connected with Netanyahu for their first conversation since the attacks.

When the two men last met in person in September, it had been under far different circumstances.

Netanyahu had been in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, and though he’d been pushing for a meeting at the White House, the president had denied him that coveted venue and instead chose to stage the bilateral meeting at a New York hotel.

Although the two leaders have known each other for decades, tensions between them were high because of Netanyahu’s push to strip Israel’s high court of some powers and other efforts to give Israel’s parliament more of a say in the selection of judges.

What detractors had taken to calling the “judicial coup” had paralysed Israeli society for months, with massive protests taking over the streets of most of the country’s cities. Most American Jewish groups were similarly aghast over the plan, and many different stakeholders had pressed the White House to keep Netanyahu at arm’s length.

In that moment of crisis, Biden wasn’t thinking about the political considerations that had weighed so heavily on his relationship with the Israeli leader.

A White House official who spoke to The Independent on condition of anonymity stressed that the president hadn’t set aside his reservations about how Netanyahu has conducted himself since regaining the Prime Minister’s office.

The official made clear that Biden’s focus in that moment was America’s longstanding friendship with Israel dating back to when then-president Harry Truman was among the first world leaders to recognise it after it declared independence in 1948.

For his part, Netanyahu wasn’t about to revisit the uncomfortable topic that had caused so much tension between the longtime allies, either.

A readout of the 7 October call released by his office said he told Biden that his country was at war and vowed: “We will win”.

In a statement that harkened back to how the Nixon administration had reacted to that surprise attack 50 years prior, Biden said he’d told Netanyahu that the US stood “ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the Government and people of Israel”.

“Terrorism is never justified. Israel has a right to defend itself and its people. The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation. My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering,” he added.

The ironclad declaration of support for Israel came at a perilous moment for America’s efforts to stand by her fellow democracies in their hours of need.

U.S. President Joe Biden, accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, makes remarks after speaking by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the situation in Israel following Hamas’ deadly attacks, from the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, U.S. October 10, 2023. (REUTERS)

Just days earlier, a group of hard-right conservatives in the House of Representatives had deposed that body’s speaker, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, and plunged the lower house of America’s bicameral legislature into chaos.

Without a speaker, the House could not pass any legislation or authorise any new funding to aid Israel’s defence.

For the moment, this wasn’t a problem because funding for defence aid to Israel had been allocated in long-term spending bills going back several years. But the possibility of a protracted conflict that would deplete Israeli arms stocks gave pause to Biden aides — and members of Congress — because the internecine fighting in the House could make it impossible to respond to conditions on the ground in a timely manner.

Some of the Republicans vying to fill the leadership void created by McCarthy’s defenestration were drawing lines in the sand around aid to another US ally embroiled in war, namely Ukraine.

Biden administration officials were hopeful that the impasse between a small but growing number of Republican isolationists and more internationalist and traditionally minded members of the GOP could be solved by linking aid to Kyiv with aid to Israel and Taiwan.

At the same time, troubling reports were filtering into the White House and State Department about hostages taken by Hamas amid protracted fighting.

By Sunday morning, the Israeli government said that at least 100 civilians and military personnel had been taken hostage. Video footage circulating on social media showed women and children being captured by armed militants after an attack on civilians at a music festival in the desert near the Israel-Gaza border. Officials with the Israeli rescue service said the festival venue massacre ended with more than 260 dead.

The White House dispatched America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to appear on several Sunday morning talk shows, where he said the State Department was still working to confirm whether Americans had been killed or taken by the terrorists.

Biden, during another call with Netanyahu on Sunday 8 October, raised the issue of the Hamas hostage-taking and made clear that the US would offer “full support” to deal with the unprecedented number of civilians taken by the militants. He also told the Israeli leader that planeloads of US defence materiel were already on the way. He later pledged to work with Israel’s government “on every aspect of the hostage crisis,” including by having agencies across the government share intelligence and hostage rescue expertise.

With the death toll rising and divisions in the House preventing any business from being carried out until 218 members could agree on a new House speaker, White House aides wanted to head off any trouble by having Biden and his confidantes make a forceful case for providing Israel with whatever it may need to achieve its’ goals.

White House aides used the Columbus Day holiday to begin drafting remarks for the president to begin making that case himself, labouring throughout the day and night on Monday 9 October as the White House was lit up in the colours of Israel’s blue and white flag.

According to White House officials, Biden took a particularly hands-on approach to the speech he delivered 10 October after he, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Blinken spoke with Netanyahu once more.

He tasked his speechwriters with ensuring that he was unequivocal in describing the Hamas attacks as beyond the pale — in language bearing no resemblance to the more apologetic descriptions of the attacks as acts of “resistance” that could be found in the discourse among the leftward reaches of his Democratic Party.

When he took to the State Dining Room of the White House flanked by Harris and Blinken after their call with Netanyahu, the president was unsparing in his description of what had transpired in Israel.

“This,” Biden said, “was an act of sheer evil.”

“It’s appalling. The brutality of Hamas, the bloodthirstiness, brings to mind the worst rampages of ISIS. This is terrorism,” he said.

He added that the Hamas attacks have also surfaced “painful memories and scars” from over a thousand years of antisemitism and genocides committed against the Jewish people.

“So in this moment, we must be crystal clear: we stand with Israel. We stand with Israel and we will make sure it has what it needs to take care of its citizens, to defend itself and respond to this attack. There’s no justification for terrorism. There’s no excuse,” he said.

Biden’s heartfelt remarks, delivered while wiping a tear from his eye at one point, heralded the start of a diplomatic push including visits to Israel and neighbouring allied countries by Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The administration has also worked overtime to smack down reports that Iran directed or played a direct role in the Hamas attacks while stressing Tehran’s longtime support for the terrorist group writ large.

White House officials have also aggressively pushed back on Republican claims that a recent prisoner swap deal directly or indirectly funded Hamas by giving Iran access to frozen funds held in Qatar for humanitarian purposes.

As for Biden, aides say he has remained engaged at a high level, speaking with Netanyahu on at least a daily basis since, and being “in constant contact” with Blinken, Austin, and his entire national security team for “obsessive updates” on “every minute detail” of the ongoing crisis, particularly as it concerns the number of Americans held hostage by Hamas and the efforts to bring them home.

White House officials on Friday said Biden’s level of attention to the crisis has included speaking with families of those taken by the terrorists as Israel prepares a ground assault with at least 300,000 troops that have massed along the border with Gaza.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council, John Kirby, told reporters that the president participated in a Zoom call with “a couple of family members” from families of the 14 known American hostages alongside national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Karstens, Undersecretary of State John Bass and the National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East, Brett McGurk .

He said the president “conveyed directly to these families that they have been in his prayers and reaffirmed for them that the United States government is doing everything possible” to determine where their family members are and bring them home.

“Several of the family members shared information about their loved one’s personal stories and experiences that they have gone through as they endure the unimaginable,” Kirby continued, adding later that US and Israeli officials are still working to determine where the hostages may be held and under what conditions.

“That’s the first thing that you got to do to be able to come up with policy options and and alternatives to try to try to get them home with their families,” he said.

The cooperation between the US and Israel — and Biden and Netanyahu — appears to be so well-received in Israel that at least one building in Tel Aviv now sports a photo of the US leader along with a message reading: “Thank you, Mr President”.

And while the lull in tensions between Biden and Netanyahu may not survive the end of Israel’s latest war — whenever that may be — Israeli officials have reacted warmly to the US president’s full-throated endorsement of the country’s defence thus far.

While some had feared that the tensions over the Netanyahu government’s proposed reforms might have poisoned the well with the Biden administration — and with Democrats in Congress — those fears appear to have been unfounded.

One Israeli diplomat who spoke to The Independent on condition of anonymity put it bluntly: “We very much appreciative for the full unconditional support we get from the Biden administration, and President Biden himself”.