As Israel-Hamas war escalates, dangers of Biden’s embrace become more apparent

US president Joe Biden rightly offered sympathy and support to Israelis in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s appalling and unjustifiable attacks of October 7th. But he has gone further than necessary in backing the Israeli government’s right to self-defence. His trip to Israel last week, made against the judgment of some of his advisers, represented the quickest that any American president has ever appeared in a war zone. The trip’s lasting image is of Biden hugging Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. As Israel’s horrific war against the people of Gaza continues to escalate, the dangers of Biden’s close embrace are becoming ever more obvious.

Some claim Biden has a larger diplomatic strategy: to publicly embrace Israel so as to better position himself to negotiate for humanitarian aid to Gazans, which the US has indeed helped secure. Biden may also hope that appearing as Israel’s best friend might make it easier for him to speak uncomfortable truths. Indeed, he movingly pleaded with Israel not to go down the same route that the US did after the 9/11 attacks. Because Americans were “consumed” by “rage” after the attacks, Biden declared, they “made mistakes” in their response.

Yet if this is Biden’s strategy, then it is dangerously naive.

It is based on a misunderstanding of what happened in the US after 9/11. The Bush administration was not consumed by rage; it exploited the terrorist attacks to launch a war against Iraq that it already wanted to wage. Netanyahu is similarly using the Hamas attacks as a pretext to weaken Palestinian power even further.

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Netanyahu never made a secret of his intention to retaliate to the fullest extent against Hamas, with minimal concern for the two million residents of Gaza, the vast majority of whom cannot be held responsible for the actions of Hamas. By embracing Netanyahu so publicly, Biden has made it difficult to distance the US from Israeli actions. And while it is surely a good thing that Biden helped secure humanitarian aid, it would be an even better thing if he did his utmost to restrain the Israeli actions that make such aid necessary in the first place.

In tying himself to Netanyahu, Biden has contravened his stated policy of supporting democratic governments abroad. Indeed, Netanyahu is the kind of leader that Biden should keep at arm’s length. He is the closest thing that Israel has to Donald Trump. He has launched an attack on the independence of the Israeli judiciary. He has aligned himself with his country’s most right-wing forces. And he faces substantial criminal charges that might land him in jail.

Biden’s calls for Israeli restraint ring hollow when his main action in response to the crisis has been to propose a $14 billion (€13.2 billion) package of further US military aid to Israel. Military support for Israel has long been the cornerstone of US policy in the region. Between 1946 and 2022, it gave more than $300 billion to Israel, making Israel by far the biggest recipient of American foreign aid. The vast majority of that money went to the Israeli military. It is difficult for the US to pose as a mediator seeking peace between Israelis and Palestinians while it arms the former to the teeth.

What is happening in Israel/Palestine today is a colossal failure of American diplomacy lasting decades. At no point has the US government ever made its support for Israel conditional on the seeking of a permanent and just settlement with Palestinians. The closest it got was during the Oslo Accords of the 1990s. But Bill Clinton failed to broker the lasting peace that he helped bring about in Northern Ireland largely because of his unwillingness to force additional Israeli concessions.

Relations between the US and Israel chilled during the Obama administration as a result of Obama’s plans to pursue a diplomatic settlement with Iran, though even then there was little question of US withdrawal of military aid. But during the Trump administration, the US tied itself to Israel even more closely. It recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in a move that provoked widespread condemnation among other world leaders. It sought to broker peace deals with Israel’s Arab neighbours designed to isolate Palestinians from their diplomatic allies. In this regard, Biden’s policy towards Israel largely picked up from his predecessor.

Now his decision to continue this policy of unconditional support hazards a disastrous regional escalation of the conflict. It is also risky in electoral terms. Biden has done a good job thus far keeping the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party on board. But he faces a third-party challenge from the veteran left-wing activist Cornel West. West’s criticism of US support for Israel may allow him to draw a small but significant number of votes from Biden.

Biden could learn something from our own president’s response when he criticised EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s similarly ill-advised trip to Israel to express her unqualified backing. While expressing “revulsion” at the Hamas attacks, Michael D Higgins also made clear that he could not “in any way support any collective punishment of an entire population”.

Israel has cut off electricity, food and water to Gaza, has bombed it mercilessly, and is preparing a possible ground invasion. Now more than ever it is crucial that world leaders declare that support for the Israeli government must be based on its observance of human rights and international law and its desire for a lasting peace. Unless Biden makes clear that these are requirements for his continued support, the US will bear responsibility for this catastrophe.

Daniel Geary is Mark Pigott Associate Professor in American History at Trinity College Dublin