For Biden and Netanyahu, Gaza is a balancing act for their political survival

The US president’s calculations must centre on the November election – Netanyahu’s, on maintaining US support and honouring his promises to Israelis, writes Mary Dejevsky. For both men’s political futures, the stakes couldn’t be higher

President Biden has said that if Israel’s operation in Rafah went ahead, he would withhold US weapons (Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Another week, a few more degrees of separation between the United States and Israel – or so it would appear. With Prime Minister Netanyahu poised to launch a major offensive against the southern Gaza city of Rafah, President Biden said he had warned Israel that if the operation went ahead, he would withhold US weapons. “It’s just wrong,” he said in an interview with CNN. “We’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”

His statement came after the Pentagon confirmed that the US had already delayed one shipment of what were called “high payload munitions” because of concerns about their possible use in Rafah. As many as a million people have been sheltering in and around the city, after being forced out of northern and central Gaza, and while some limited evacuations have been organised, there is nowhere safe for the majority to go.

News of the delayed shipment and Biden’s very personal threat to withhold future deliveries indicated that the US president could for the first time be using Israel’s reliance on US weapons as a way of constraining Israel’s operations in Gaza, after months in which critics of Israel’s conduct of the war have been urging him to do just that. This makes him one of very few US presidents to reach for the arms supply lever in relations with Israel.

How effective such threats might be, however, and indeed whether the US will act on them, is another matter. It is worth noting that the first shipment was delayed for two weeks, not halted, and also that Biden’s warning was carefully qualified. It would take effect only if Israel went into Rafah – Biden added, “they haven’t gone into Rafah yet” – and it would apply only to “the weapons that have been historically used to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem”. Nor is it clear how vital such weapons might be to any Israeli offensive in Rafah.

None of this prevented Israeli politicians on the right, including a minister who accused Biden of helping Hamas, from taking umbrage at his remarks, or from some dissension breaking out in Israel’s fragile coalition government. But the bottom line is that this US threat is heavily circumscribed, it is conditional, and it does not apply to weapons Israel might need for what outsiders might judge to be its own defence.

In all, Biden has upped the verbal warnings to Israel – which is something – but so far not much more. As was seen when Iran launched air attacks in response to the presumed Israeli attack on its consular building in Damascus, any action seen to present a direct threat to Israel’s security calls forth a prompt and overwhelming US response. There would seem to be not the slightest prospect of the US leaving its ally in the lurch.

This does not mean, however, that Biden will not slow or even stall certain arms supplies. Nor does it mean, though, that Netanyahu will scale back or even call off any planned offensive against Rafah to suit the United States. This is because these are two national leaders whose very political survival will depend on the decisions they make in the coming days, weeks and months and whose fates are, to an extent, entwined.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s freedom of manoeuvre is restricted in part by the rod he made for his own back after the Hamas attacks of 7 October. His pledge to “destroy Hamas” has come back repeatedly to haunt him, as every military operation launched against Gaza has proved more complex and costly than Israel appeared to anticipate. Something similar would apply to the depth and breadth of the international opprobrium, which has come from Israel’s allies as well as from its enemies, and inflamed much opinion across the Western world.

Netanyahu is now caught on several hooks, the most obvious being the difficulty of combining two largely incompatible objectives: destroying Hamas, on the one hand, and securing the release of Israel’s 100-plus hostages on the other. The longer military operations take, the less willing Israel will be to agree to the ceasefire that Hamas has made its condition for releasing more hostages. In the meantime, domestic impatience – and so the pressure on Netanyahu – increases, from those wanting the hostages to be the overriding priority, and those demanding the annihilation of Hamas.

For how long, and even whether, Netanyahu can continue his balancing act could determine how long he can continue in office. If his coalition collapses, not only could he lose his job, but an inquest will begin into the failings that made 7 October possible – failings that occurred on his watch. Can he afford to launch his offensive in Rafah? Can he afford not to? Is US defence support really at risk? It is in his interests – and what he might well see as Israel’s interests – to prevaricate for as long as possible and drive the hardest possible bargain for a ceasefire.

But the stakes are as high for Joe Biden. He is just six months away from the election where he is seeking a second term. Those six months can seem at once a very long time or a very short time, with a single big misstep having the potential to make or break a bid. And while foreign policy rarely decides the outcome of a US presidential election, it can have an effect. Jimmy Carter’s failure to secure the release of US hostages in Iran cast him as a weak president and may have cost him a second term. The Vietnam War – or rather its domestic repercussions – arguably brought Richard Nixon victory in 1968, on a promise to bring the war to “an honourable end”.

Domestic repercussions of the Gaza war could also be relevant this time around, even though the United States is not militarily engaged, and the draft – the central issue then – has long gone. Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and the Biden administration’s near-unconditional support for Israel have sparked protests on university campuses across the United States (and further afield).

Even if the demonstrations subside with the end of the academic year, these – and other street – protests already suggest a possibly big shift in US opinion, away from unquestioning support for Israel. That young people are in the vanguard could pose an additional problem for Biden, given the Democrats’ expectation of winning the youth vote.

The US administration has gradually been adapting its official position on Israel – including in the UN – making its misgivings fiercer and more public as time has gone on, as well as moving to support a ceasefire. Whether Biden will act on his threat to hold back certain arms supplies, whether he might broaden that threat, and what difference this might make, either to Israel’s conduct of its war or to US electoral support for Biden, are all open questions. But they point to the delicate judgements Biden will have to make.

For Biden, the calculations centre on his election chances and America’s standing abroad; for Netanyahu – on honouring his promises, on Hamas and hostages, and on US support. But both leaders are fighting, in different ways, for their political survival against a background of sharply divided domestic opinion. Alas, such conditions will rarely be conducive to the wisest decisions.