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Biden’s Bear Hug of Netanyahu Is a Disaster [1]

['Jeet Heer', 'Chris Lehmann', 'Mike Duncan', 'Dave Zirin', 'Nikole Rajgor', 'Elie Mystal', 'Joan Walsh', 'Michael T. Klare', 'Rebecca Ariel Porte', 'Feroz Rather']

Date: 2023-12-04 14:30:04+00:00

World / Biden’s Bear Hug of Netanyahu Is a Disaster The renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas shows the incoherence of mixing humanitarian words and bigger bombs.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hugs US President Joe Biden upon his arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on October 18, 2023. (Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

The humanitarian pause between Israel and Hamas, which was always fragile, is now over. Even during the pause, Israel continued to kill Palestinian civilians, albeit in smaller numbers than before the hostage exchange with Hamas started. On Friday, the Israeli government cited a Hamas rocket attack as reason for ending the pause. More than 700 Palestinian civilians have been killed since the resumption of bombing, adding to a death toll of more than 15,000—the large majority of whom have been civilians.

The high civilian death rate brings to the fore the fundamental policy contradiction that has bedeviled the Biden administration since the start of the conflict: how to reconcile the stated desire to minimize civilian death with the full-throttle support of Israel that the administration is committed to in practice.

Speaking on Saturday at a National Defense Forum, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin added to the chorus of public rebukes the Biden administration is making of Israel’s treatment of civilians in the current conflict. Lloyd told the audience, “I have personally pushed Israeli leaders to avoid civilian casualties, and to shun irresponsible rhetoric, and to prevent violence by settlers in the West Bank.”

As befits his position as the cabinet official overseeing the Pentagon, Austin’s criticism of Israel focused not just on the violation of international law incurred by indiscriminately killing civilians but also on the fundamental incoherence of Israel’s military strategy. Austin noted, “In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

Austin’s caution is sober and compelling, but it ignores the fact that Israel’s incoherent policy is paralleled by the Biden administration’s equally incoherent handling of Israel. Since the Hamas massacre of October 7, Biden has followed what has been called a “bear hug” strategy of holding tight to Benjamin Netanyahu as a way to contain and channel Israel’s response. As Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, sums up the strategy, “Bear-hugging America’s ally, [Biden] apparently figured, was the surest way to restrain it—or the only way he was willing to try.”

In recent days, the bear hug has been accompanied by louder public criticism of Israel’s disregard for civilian life—sharp words that previously had been only uttered privately. At a press conference in Tel Aviv on Friday, just hours before the humanitarian pause was broken, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that in speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “I underscored the imperative of the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale that we saw in Northern Gaza not be repeated in the South.”

But this rhetorical emphasis on civilian life amounts to little in practice, because on a policy level the Biden administration refuses to put any conditions on aid to Israel. There is absolutely no incentive for Netanyahu’s government to heed the pleadings of Austin, Blinken, or even Vice President Kamala Harris, who has spoken in similar terms. On Sunday, Harris said, “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. As Israel pursues its military objectives in Gaza, we believe Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians.”

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[1] Url: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-netanyahu-bear-hug-disaster/

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