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| President Joe Biden shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office on July 25. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) |
| “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan wrote a year ago. The text of his essay in Foreign Affairs had been submitted before Hamas’s horrific Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on southern Israel — a raid that marked the bloodiest day in the history of the Jewish people since the Holocaust and prefigured Israel’s deadly devastation of Gaza that followed. In his view of a more “quiet” region, Sullivan was channeling much of the White House’s disposition toward the Middle East at the time. President Joe Biden and his lieutenants wanted to invest less political capital in thorny, intractable conflicts there and were privately pleased by signs that Middle Eastern states were sorting things out themselves: The war in Yemen had cooled, Gulf monarchies were politicking with both Iran and Israel, hatchets were being buried. With its plate already full of challenges — from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the emerging contest with China — it was no surprise that the White House yearned for a less noisy Middle East. The events of Oct. 7 exploded this “quiet,” and served as a garish reminder of the unresolved crisis between Israelis and Palestinians that successive U.S. administrations hadn’t addressed. It plunged the White House back into the Middle East, prompting a year of fitful U.S. efforts to back Israel’s campaigns but also provide humanitarian aid to besieged Palestinians and ward against a spiraling regional conflagration. A year later, the legacy of Oct. 7 will provide an unwanted capstone to Biden’s term in office. The destruction of much of Gaza and the shocking Palestinian death toll has led his critics on the left to cast him as an accomplice to what they say has been a “genocide.” The cease-fire that U.S. officials long insisted was just around the corner — a deal that would end hostilities and free Israeli hostages — is not likely to be clinched before Biden exits the White House. A regional war is already underway, with Israel expanding its operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran launching waves of missile attacks against the Jewish state. On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published a video message to the Lebanese people, decrying how their nation had been made into a “forward operating military base” for Iran and suggesting that unless they cast out Hezbollah — an armed militant organization, but also an influential political faction — they would face the same “destruction and suffering” that Israel has inflicted on Gaza. All of this has frustrated a Biden administration that spent months trying to forge a truce between Israel and Hezbollah. Recent reporting indicates growing “distrust” between U.S. officials and their Israeli counterparts; the Biden administration was reportedly furious when Israel gave them little notice of its strikes that killed Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, as my colleagues reported, privately characterized Netanyahu’s government as “playing with house money” — operating on the presumption that, whatever it does, it could count on the United States to support its war aims and defend Israel against any Iranian retaliation. As reports that coincided with the anniversary of Oct. 7 revealed, Netanyahu has been counting on Biden’s acquiescence for the length of the conflict, which has deeply damaged Israel’s international reputation even as Netanyahu’s government has secured significant tactical gains over its Hamas and Hezbollah foes. In the initial weeks after Oct. 7, Biden officials expressed internal concerns about the prospect of war crimes and massive civilian casualties in Gaza, according to leaked emails obtained by Reuters. But Biden’s championing of Israel’s right to self-defense outweighed any other considerations. As my colleagues reported, U.S. officials doubted Netanyahu’s insistence that the ratio of militants to civilians killed was 1-to-1. Internal U.S. assessments by two separate agencies this year, first reported by ProPublica, concluded that Israel was intentionally blocking food and fuel from entering Gaza — an accusation that’s driving potential war crimes cases against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the International Criminal Court. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued to run interference, stressing before Congress this spring that there was no evidence of Israel deliberately stymying such deliveries, no matter the conclusions of his own staff. Biden and Netanyahu’s dealings with one another since last October have been strained and tense. The right-wing Israeli leader has made no bones about his preference for former president Donald Trump, and his far-right allies routinely pour scorn on the ruling U.S. Democrats. Biden tried to restrain Israel’s full-scale invasion of the southern Gazan city of Rafah this year, aware of the calamity that it would represent for civilians and aid agencies running their logistics there. It proceeded, with worse consequences than what U.S. officials had initially predicted. In an April phone call, according to reporting by veteran journalist Bob Woodward, Biden lamented to Netanyahu that the Israeli leader had “no strategy” — a charge echoed by some of Netanyahu’s domestic opponents, who still believe he wanted to extend the war to consolidate his delicate political position. In another call in July, according to Woodward, Biden told Netanyahu that the global perception of Israel was increasingly that it has become “a rogue actor.” Netanyahu has brushed off the criticism and continued to operate at cross purposes with a Biden administration that is keen to cease hostilities and resume the difficult diplomatic work of further integrating Israel into the Middle East, including through normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia. Riyadh, though, has ruled out any such rapprochement absent of the emergence of a separate Palestinian state — something Netanyahu and most in his orbit refuse to allow. “As he sought a path for long-term peace and stability for Israel, Biden was undermined at every turn by Netanyahu’s conduct of the Gaza war, his refusal to consider establishment of a Palestinian state, and the territorial ambitions of his right-wing government in the occupied territories,” my colleagues Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan wrote. When the Biden administration — which has delivered billions of dollars in military aid to Israel this year alone — briefly considered stopping the transfer of massive 2,000-pound bombs, it elicited an angry backlash from Israel that Republicans also seized upon. Cowed by the reaction, the Biden administration kept the supply of arms flowing unhindered. Sullivan, who a year ago had hailed the “quiet” of the Middle East, is still trying to be optimistic. “No one is ever criticized for predicting that things will only get worse in the Middle East; the hard thing is to push past the hopelessness and put the pieces down that build toward a genuinely brighter future, even as we navigate the heightened risks and exacting human toll at the present day,” he told a gathering at the Israeli Embassy in Washington this week. It’s unlikely that either Biden or Sullivan will have a front seat in guiding diplomacy toward that imagined brighter future. But the staggering human toll in Gaza and elsewhere — and the mounting likelihood of regional war — all occurred on their watch. “To use the language of diplomacy: Washington kept giving Israel carrots, while Israel seemed to know that the U.S. stick was more of a twig,” my colleagues wrote. | ||||||