Only a lasting cease-fire in Gaza will let Biden off the hook

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

U.S. President Joe Biden and his aides must feel they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole where, much like in Alice in Wonderland, their Israeli interlocutors neither mean what they say nor say what they mean.

Desperate to seal a lasting Gaza cease-fire — partly to gain some electoral ease at home, where polling suggests Biden has a big Israel problem — the White House has been pressing hard to secure a permanent truce. And on Monday, the president unveiled a hostage deal that, if accepted, would culminate in an end to the war.

Biden appeared to have every reason for his confidence — after all, the three-part proposal was largely developed by Israel in the first place.

However, Washington was too quick on the draw.

Merely a framework that had been shaped by members of the Israeli war Cabinet just a few days before — and hadn’t been shared with the broader Cabinet either — the proposal was a work in progress. Moreover, according to a senior Israeli aide who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity as he isn’t authorized to speak to the media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had raised objections to it.

Netanyahu scorned the deal within hours of Biden’s announcement, interrupting the Sabbath to say any permanent cease-fire was a non-starter. “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: The destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” he said.

And in response, a frustrated Biden once again accused the Israeli premier of wanting to prolong the conflict for purely domestic political reasons and save his rumbunctious government from imploding. Unsurprisingly, the ultranationalists and settler leaders in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition have been threatening to quit if he agrees to any lasting truce.

But while few doubt Netanyahu’s playing politics, the White House isn’t clear of the charge either.

The truth is, the pressure on Biden from his party’s clamorous progressive wing is only growing. Arab-Americans and young voters are furious with him for not conditioning continued support for Israel on Netanyahu ending the military campaign. As the death tally in Gaza climbs and the humanitarian crisis worsens, Democratic donors’ waning support for the Israeli operation could well cost Biden his reelection. And with every strike that leads to a high civilian death toll, Biden’s electoral dilemma grows.

However, if Biden were to come down hard on Israel and stop sending weapons and kit, then he’d enrage pro-Israel voters. As pollster Douglas Schoen said: “This issue is a stone-cold loser for Biden. He’s losing votes from the left, right and center.” It’s only a lasting cease-fire that will let him off the hook.

No wonder the president ramped up efforts to cajole Israel into signing off on the deal this week — a deal envisioning the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza, a permanent end to hostilities after a six-week cease-fire, and the staged exchange of Israelis held captive by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails. Then, it would be time to focus on the rebuilding of post-war Gaza.

Meanwhile, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been criss-crossing the region, meeting with Arab leaders, trying to get the deal over the line to pile pressure on Israel. And G7 allies have also helpfully urged Israel — and Hamas — to conclude the deal.

The death tally in Gaza has climbed and the humanitarian crisis worsened. | Bashar Taleb/Getty Images

Furthermore, in hopes of prising the war Cabinet away from Netanyahu — who’s seen as the main roadblock to the deal — Blinken has been lobbying its members too. On Sunday, he spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the leader of the centrist Israel Resilience Party Benny Gantz, who’s been threatening to quit the Cabinet.

According to a State Department summary, the U.S. diplomat told them that aside from securing the freedom of Israeli hostages, the deal would also “advance Israel’s long-term security interests” by deescalating the conflict intensifying along Israel’s northern border with Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah. And almost as if to underscore Blinken’s point, Hezbollah lobbed a series of rockets over the border just the following day, causing sweeping wildfires that rapidly spread.

Unsurprisingly, Blinken did get what he wanted from Gantz, who said in a statement that it was “imperative” the deal approved by Biden be implemented. Gallant, though, was much more cagey, thanking Blinken for his efforts, while emphasizing “Israel’s commitment to dismantling Hamas as a governing and military authority” in Gaza.

This is because Gallant’s main policy gripe with Netanyahu isn’t over a hostage deal, it’s over the absence of a post-war Israeli governance plan for Gaza — something Biden’s also pleaded with Israel to come up with for months. But Gallant isn’t going to crash Netanyahu’s unruly coalition over the hostage deal — the ruling Likud party would never forgive him if he did.

As such, all Blinken can show for his efforts is backing for the hostage deal from the ultra-Orthodox politicians of the Shas and United Torah Judaism parties. And though both are members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, it remains unlikely they would be willing to crash his government either — according to a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, a majority of their traditional voters favor prioritizing the military operation in Gaza over getting the hostages back.

Biden accused the Israeli premier of wanting to prolong the conflict for purely domestic political reasons. | Amir Levy/Getty Images

The Biden administration can at least draw some comfort from the same poll, which suggests a majority of Jewish Israelis see a hostage deal as the higher national priority. But the bad news is that this isn’t the case with right-wing voters who support the coalition overall — and coalition parties are likely to heed their voters rather than protesters and hostage families.

With their eyes fixed on the U.S. election, Biden and his aides arguably jumped too quickly to push a deal that wasn’t oven-ready and hadn’t yet been endorsed by all members of the Israeli government. Ultranationalist ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir now believe any lasting truce now will end up with Hamas resurrecting itself in Gaza; and Netanyahu can hardly pull the plug on the war when Hamas can still fire rockets at Israel and is mounting small-group insurgency in northern Gaza — which was meant to be cleared by the IDF.

So, as with previous deals that have been mooted over the past few months, this one, too, is likely to fall by the wayside in the face of Israel’s refusal to agree to a permanent end to hostilities before it has secured its main war aims. The other side of the coin, of course, is that the Palestinian militant group remains adamant it won’t agree to just a temporary cease-fire either.