The US has Israel’s back – so can it broker a peace deal?

Joe Biden has sent his secretary of state to be a cool-headed presence as Israel plans its next military move in its war on Hamas. But what will the superpower offer in return for restraint, asks Sean O’Grady

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, arriving in Tel Aviv (Reuters)

In a long (some say overlong) political career, Joe Biden has built up a formidable reputation as a deal-maker. It’s what he did in Congress, what he did as VP to Barack Obama, and it’s what he’s still doing now.

It’s a useful skill. He’s sent his secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, over to Israel, to be a cool-headed presence, and there can be little doubt that Biden will be offering a deal to Israel. What might it be?

First, unequivocal public support. Put at its simplest: “The United States has Israel's back, and we're going to be working on this through the day and beyond.”

When he met Jewish leaders in Washington, Biden could not have been more empathetic, displaying a genuine sensitivity to their deepest fears about the future of the state of Israel and its people on what he called the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust: “This attack was a campaign of pure cruelty, not just hate, but pure cruelty against the Jewish people, and I would argue it is the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Silence is complicity. I refuse to be silent.”

Second, actions to match the words. He’s “surging” military assistance, and has sent an aircraft carrier group, led by the USS Gerald R Ford, to the eastern Mediterranean. We all know who that gesture was aimed at: “We made it clear to the Iranians: be careful,” Biden has declared.

America and Iran have had a long and unhappy relationship over the past half century or so – hostage-taking, state-sponsored terror, proxy wars with US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. Washington is under no illusions about who arms and trains Hamas and Hezbollah. By the same token, the Iranians are still smarting from the assassination of their proxy commander in Syria, Qasem Soleimani, victim of a US drone strike in 2020.

In the end, in such a region and with Iran so prominently featured in the current conflict, the US will always choose Israel, the only democracy around and America’s only truly reliable ally.

But privately? There are tensions.

With the unconditional assurance of US support for Israel’s right to exist, Blinken will surely be urging the new Netanyahu-Gantz emergency unity government to exercise caution and not play into the hands of Hamas and Iran. This is the informal “deal” America will be trying to strike – all the arms and diplomatic support of the superpower, in return for restraint.

This, after all, has been the pattern of US-Israel relations for decades and was only seriously breached once, when, in 1991, secretary of state James Baker openly threatened the aid programme over Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

That was more than three decades ago, during the presidency of George HW Bush. It worked at the time – but it has never been repeated.