Is it too late to course-correct Biden’s Rafah betrayal?
An American president trying to force Israel to accept U.S. terms, especially when we are being attacked, is something many Israelis disapprove of.
Israelis woke up last week to push notifications from various media outlets with the headline “President Biden: If Israel’s goes into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons.” The first reaction was shock and surprise, which very quickly turned into frustration — and yes, anger — toward the U.S. president. Many Israelis, including me, also felt fear about what this statement might mean for Israel’s security.
As a longtime supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship and Biden himself, it’s hard for me to say this, but Biden's statement felt a little like betrayal — and from conversations I had with colleagues and friends, that feeling is widespread. For many of us, President Biden removed our last leverage point over Hamas and damaged our deterrence vis-à-vis our enemies.
It is worth understanding what is going on in many Israelis’ minds today. It’s been only seven months since Hamas attacked us, committing unspeakable atrocities and massacring our loved ones, in one of the most horrific attacks in recent history. A day after Hamas attacked, Hezbollah, the terror organization that controls southern Lebanon and is supported by Iran, targeted Israeli communities in the north, forcing Israel to evacuate 60,000 civilians. Those attacks have only continued to intensify.
On Oct. 7, Hamas also took hundreds of Israeli hostages, including young girls; some are still in Gaza going through hell. Since then, Israel has fought with some success to bring them back and to eliminate Hamas, but it’s clear that some of the objectives were still not achieved.
Israel also entered negotiations with Hamas with the hope of bringing our hostages home. Israel was even willing to provide massive concessions, or as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called it, an “extraordinarily generous” proposal, only to be met with repeated negative answers by Hamas. (A recent “yes” from Hamas was not a true yes but more of a counteroffer that Israel can’t accept.) Then came the decision to enter Rafah, aimed at putting more pressure on Hamas, only to have the rug pulled from under us by the American president.
In recent weeks, we Israelis have been debating how far Israel should go in its concessions to Hamas to bring our loved ones back home. Just in the last few days, one of Israel’s leading news channels published a poll saying that 41 percent of Israelis think that the government should agree to Hamas's counteroffer, while 44 percent said the opposite. Many also don’t support our current prime minister’s actions and policies, and blame him for what happened on Oct. 7.
Regardless, an American president trying to force Israel to accept U.S. terms, especially when we are being attacked, is something many Israelis disapprove of. Coming on the backdrop of reports that U.S. officials did not share with Israel the last proposal details before Hamas announced its approval, this move seems designed to deliberately force Israel to agree to U.S. terms.
The concern many Israelis are feeling is that not only will this recent move hurt the chances of a possible hostage deal, but it will also damage Israel’s deterrence of other regional enemies, namely Hezbollah and Iran. And they are right to worry.
Hezbollah and Iran are watching recent tensions between Israel and the U.S. closely and gleefully. This recent statement by the president will be interpreted in Beirut and Tehran as though the U.S. has had enough with Israel’s war in Gaza — meaning that, potentially, the U.S. will not help when Israel will need to deal with the threat up north. The region has already learned in recent years that the U.S. is extremely risk averse in the Middle East; the chances for the U.S. to get involved militarily is very low, and this recent move by the president will only cement this belief even further.
All this is not to say that Israelis don’t appreciate what Biden has done for us thus far. When he came to Israel a few weeks after Oct. 7, he started his speech by saying “I come to Israel with a single message: You are not alone. You are not alone,” bringing tens of thousands of Israelis to tears. He followed up on that promise when he stood by Israel for months, even when he was getting strong pushback at home and from other countries. We did not forget that.
But this recent move is a grave mistake. It won’t bring the end of this war, as it will strengthen Hamas's stubbornness and invite more attacks against Israel from other fronts, leading to more escalation.
It seems that the damage has already been done, and that this statement will strengthen Hamas’s resolve to not agree to anything but its own proposal and weaken Israel deterrence. However, President Biden might be able to improve the situation. He needs to coordinate with Israel and announce publicly the relevant proposal that Israel agreed to and state that the U.S. supports this position. If Hamas refuses, he should announce he will give Israel the proper support to continue in Rafah, all while clarifying that the U.S. will stand right beside Israel against Hezbollah and Iranian threats. Such a move would help the U.S. to pressure Hamas and to achieve a ceasefire agreement, all while proving again its “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security.
I still believe that President Biden cares about the security of Israel. He made a terrible mistake, but there might be some time to fix it.
Nadav Pollak is a lecturer on Middle East affairs at Reichman University and a former research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.