On Monday, the Israeli military ordered Palestinians in the city of Rafah to evacuate ahead of airstrikes, which unleashed fears that Israel was starting a ground invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city, where 1.4 million Palestinians have taken shelter. Hours later, Hamas announced that it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal outlined by Egypt and Qatar. But the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected the deal and doubled down on his plan to invade Rafah and achieve “total victory” against Hamas.
It was a dizzying day in Israel’s brutal seven-month war on Gaza. But one thing was clear: Netanyahu does not want to end the war – and he’s doing all he can to undermine negotiations for a ceasefire and an agreement to release the remaining hostages held by Hamas since its 7 October attack on Israel. Netanyahu and his extremist allies fear that once the war ends, they will face early parliamentary elections and multiple investigations into the government’s intelligence failures leading up to the Hamas attacks.
Netanyahu and his Likud party are likely to lose any upcoming elections, and once he’s out of power, Netanyahu faces a long-delayed corruption trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust for acts he allegedly committed during earlier stints as prime minister. Netanyahu is a political survivor who has put his personal interests above all else. He is the longest-serving premier in Israel’s history, having served for more than 16 years over multiple terms since 1996.
It’s clear why Netanyahu would want to prolong a ruthless war to cling to power and avoid accountability. It’s less clear why Joe Biden would risk his own political future on unconditional support for Netanyahu and his extremist government.
After 7 October, the US president announced his absolute support for Israel and embraced Netanyahu in a bear hug during a visit to Tel Aviv. Since then, the prime minister has consistently embarrassed and broken his promises to Israel’s most important ally without paying a price. For months, Biden and his top aides complained about Netanyahu and the horrific number of Palestinian casualties, but they continued to provide diplomatic cover and US weapons that allow Israel to sustain its war machine.
Today, Netanyahu seems ready to defy all of Biden’s supposed red lines: by launching a major ground invasion of Rafah, despite months of warnings from the US, and sabotaging a ceasefire deal. Netanyahu and his allies are trying to sell the Israeli public – and the world – on the myth that they can win a complete victory in Gaza if the Israeli military can destroy four Hamas battalions that it claims are holed up in Rafah. “We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there – whether or not there is a deal – in order to achieve total victory,” Netanyahu said last week.
But Biden doesn’t have to buy into Netanyahu’s reckless and inhumane policy, which ignores the fate of 1.4 million Palestinians driven out of their homes in other parts of Gaza by the Israeli military, using US-supplied weapons. Washington has provided tens of thousands of bombs and other munitions that enabled Israel to carry out one of the most destructive bombing campaigns in modern history, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, a majority of them women and children, and unleashed famine in northern Gaza.
After seven months of supporting such wanton death and destruction, Biden is finally showing a willingness to use the most effective leverage he has over Israel: the president can stop US shipments of weapons and force Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire. Despite Netanyahu defying and humiliating him at every turn, Biden had resisted changing US policy since October – even as he continued to lose support among Black and Arab American voters, along with young progressives, who are dismayed by his backing of Israel’s slaughter.
Instead of taking action – which could have significantly lessened Palestinian suffering and starvation over the past few months – the Biden administration decided to leak a stream of stories indicating that its patience was running out and Biden was close to a “breach” with Netanyahu over Gaza. In one leak to NBC News, anonymous Biden aides claimed that the president called Netanyahu an “asshole” at least three times.
While Biden was busy telling the world how fed up he was with Netanyahu, the prime minister used these empty threats to enhance his position and argue that he’s the only Israeli leader capable of standing up to the US.
Last week, Biden finally delayed a weapons shipment to Israel, withholding several thousand bombs which the US administration fears could be dropped on Rafah by the Israeli military during a large-scale invasion. It’s a small step toward restraining Netanyahu, although the administration recently approved other arms shipments to Israel worth $827m.
On Wednesday, Biden said he would also block the delivery of artillery shells and other weapons that could be used to bomb densely populated areas of Rafah. It was the first time that Biden blocked some arms shipments to Israel, although he made clear that he won’t limit shipments for the Iron Dome missile defense system and other weapons that ensure Israel is able to “respond to attacks.”
Biden and his top aides have another opportunity this week to change course and end US complicity in Israel’s war. A new national security memo that Biden issued in February, under pressure from some Democrats in Congress critical of his unconditional support for Israel, requires the administration to certify to Congress that recipients of US weapons are abiding by international law and allowing the transport of humanitarian aid during active conflicts. The administration can suspend or cancel arms shipments to countries that fail to meet the requirements set out in its memo, which reinforces existing US laws.
In late March, the state department confirmed that Israel had submitted written assurances that it was not using US weapons to violate international law. After receiving those statements from Israeli officials, the Biden administration announced that Israel had not violated international law or prevented humanitarian aid from reaching starving Palestinians – even as the world could see Israel blocking aid shipments from entering Gaza in real time.
But the administration is required to submit an annual report to Congress, which is due this week, explaining whether Israel’s statements are valid and how US officials evaluated these claims. Last month, Reuters reported that several senior officials have told the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in an internal memo that Israel’s assurances are “neither credible nor reliable”. The officials from four different state department bureaus raised questions about potential Israeli violations of international law during the Gaza war.
The fact that US officials decided to leak this classified document shows the level of concern about American complicity in potential Israeli war crimes – and the lack of faith that Biden and his top aides will stop weapons shipments to Israel even when there’s evidence that it is violating international and US laws.
For months, human rights and international relief groups have documented that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war – a violation of international law – and obstructing the delivery of food and other aid into Gaza. In January, the international court of justice ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide by its troops, and to provide basic services and allow more humanitarian assistance into Gaza. But Israel has continued to defy the court’s rulings, most recently on 5 May, when it closed a key crossing point for aid into Gaza after a Hamas rocket attack.
Washington provides $3.8bn in military aid to Israel a year – and Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign aid in the world, having received about $300bn since the state was founded in 1948. Last month, Congress approved $26bn in additional support to Israel, which includes $14bn in unconditional military aid and some humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza.
This level of support gives Biden and his administration tremendous leverage over Netanyahu and the Israeli government. But until this week, Biden has decided not to use that power – or to abandon a foreign leader who’s willing to prolong a brutal war to save himself.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University
