The Case for Biden on Gaza

Despite Failure to Stop the Bombing, Biden has Continued to Make Palestinian Self-Determination a Central Part of the Debate

The anger at Biden on Gaza is understandable. He has asserted continued U.S. support for Israel, even as that government has committed mass murder and mass destruction of Gaza.

And yet.

In many ways, the Biden administration has been the one force putting any limits on Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians and taking real steps to advance long-term Palestinian goals for self-determination. A few key examples:

»»» In the initial weeks of the war, it was the Biden administration that pressured Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza after Israel had sealed the borders.

»»» While temporary, the truce negotiated with the strong involvement of the Biden administration to exchange hostages and expand humanitarian efforts in Gaza, reflects the pressure the administration has put on Israel.

»»» Most importantly, Biden made it clear early on in the conflict that the U.S. would oppose any expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, teaming up with the Jordan King - possibly the strongest relationship Israel has in the Middle East - to emphasize the point. Many in the Israeli leadership have made it clear that ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians out of Gaza was their goal, so this clear red line by the Biden administration has been critical for avoiding a repeat of the Nakba expulsions of 1948 that left millions of Palestinians refugees in other countries - and barred from reentry by Israel.

»»» Beyond curtailing Israel’s push for ethnic cleansing, the Biden administration has said Israel can’t restore its full Occupation of Gaza - as many in the Israel government want - but must allow the Palestinian Authority to assume administrative control once the immediate conflict is over. This proposal was resisted by Israel initially but has won grudging acceptance by some in the Israeli leadership as the conflict has worn on.

The Palestinian Authority has endorsed Biden’s plan and agreed to internal democratic reforms - including holding the first new elections in the West Bank and Gaza since 2006 - to elect leadership to run the newly united territories.

Biden has taken on the practical issue of making sure the Palestinian Authority is receiving the tax revenues collected on imports, which Israel has been withholding since October 7th. In what news accounts have described as one of the more bruising conversations between Biden and Netanyahu, the President has demanded Israel transfer the funds so the Palestinian Authority can operate effectively.

»»» This is part of Biden’s broader push to make the creation of a Palestinian state part of any long-term settlement of the current Gaza war by Israel. Israel’s incursion into Gaza has had the perverse result (at least from the Israeli viewpoint) of allowing Biden to revive the focus on establishing a two-state solution.

Netanyahu’s Likud allowed Hamas to receive outside funding and encouraged them to stay in power in Gaza to weaken the Palestinian Authority, keep Palestinians divided, and undermine any push for a Palestinian state. Note that this article is from 2019, reflecting that this Likud strategy of support for Hamas has been an open secret in Israel for years.

Biden, by seeking to unite the territories under one Palestinian administration, undercuts this two-decade strategy by Israel’s right and creates the first concrete step towards a united Palestinian state encompassing Gaza and the West Bank.

Commentators highlight that Netanyahu, whose domestic support has plunged in the wake of the failure to prevent the Hamas attack on October 7, sees positioning himself as the “leader who can stand up to Biden and prevent a Palestinian state” as his last-ditch bid to hold onto power.

Notably, Netanyahu sees Biden as the main antagonist to his Greater Israel goals, not the United Nations or any other forces, but Biden. This is probably the best endorsement of Biden’s actions since October 7th that he could have.

The Common Principles of Self-Determination in Biden’s Palestinian and Ukraine Policy

The refusal to allow Israel to hold onto control of Gaza is quite similar to the principles Biden has supported in Ukraine of refusing to allow invaders to permanently annex territory, as Russia has sought to do in eastern Ukraine.

While Hamas committing its own invasion and murders on Oct. 7 created a murkier comparison, Biden has maintained consistency in the principle of refusing to support Israel using the current war to annex or otherwise seek control of Gaza beyond the current military conflict.

There are a significant number of US leaders who may condemn Russian aggression but seem quite enthusiastic for Israel to permanently occupy Gaza. Nikki Haley in a recent interview endorsed Israel expelling Palestinians to “pro-Hamas countries”, a flat-out endorsement of ethnic cleansing.

Conversely, as I detailed in a recent post, there is a faction of pro-Palestinian protest leaders who have endorsed letting Russia hold onto conquered areas of Ukraine, de facto endorsing the mass murder and ethnic cleansing in that region even as they condemn similar actions in Gaza.

So Biden deserves credit for promoting some consistency in defending self-determination and refusing to allow annexation of territory through warfare, even by countries like Israel who he considers allies.

Why Hasn’t Biden Done More on Behalf of the Palestinians?

Biden has condemned Israel’s conduct of the war, in increasingly harsh terms as the body count has climbed past the 20,000 death mark.

However, critics quite reasonably might dismiss such statements by Biden when the U.S. has funded Israel’s war machine and Biden has a proposal to add billions more.

If Biden condemns the mass murder by Israeli forces, why doesn’t he just stop it, ending all US support for Israel if that’s what it takes?

That is obviously the moral policy Biden should be supporting.

But it also might be counterproductive and undermine the gains Biden has been able to make.

This reality is largely due to the political context in both Israel and the U.S. Biden adopting the policies that, in the abstract, I wish he would, could end up strengthening right-wing elements in both Israel and the United States and undermining any hope of Palestinian self-determination.

»»» Take the Israeli political context first.

Some have called Biden’s approach a “bear hug”: embracing Israel publicly while privately using leverage to push for policy change by the Israeli government. Another description of this is that Biden is acting as a hostage negotiator, working to calm the fears of the Israeli public enough that they will accept a reasonable alternative to continuing mass slaughter in Gaza.

The Biden administration is faced with Israeli public that has bought into murderous retaliation in response to October 7th, up to and including ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. See this twitter post highlighting public support for “voluntary migration” from Gaza, posted by a Knesset member, top rival to Netanyahu for leadership of the Likud, and the Israeli representative at the United Nations during the Trump administration.

The problem with the U.S threatening just to cut Israel off is that it will likely further feed their paranoia and isolation. And a paranoid, bloodthirsty country armed with nuclear weapons is a potentially catastrophic danger to everyone in the region. The Biden administration seems to hope that if the U.S. is seen as guaranteeing Israel’s security, that can calm some of the paranoia among the Israeli public.

The flip side is that the U.S. leverage to threaten Israel with loss of financial support is less than many people think. U.S. financial support once mattered greatly for Israel, but today, Israel has a GDP of half a trillion dollars, so a few billion in aid matters but they can clearly survive without it. And as this 2021 article details, Israel has worked to become largely self-sufficient militarily:

So Biden has been operating with real but limited leverage on Israel, where his greatest tool is working to calm the fears of the Israeli public and make the case for why settling the Palestinian issue in a just way is the key to long-term security for everyone.

»»» The US political context means Biden probably can’t cut off aid to Israel, even if he wanted to

Even if Biden did try to cut off aid to Israel, he would face an overwhelming consensus in Congress supporting military support. Back in 2021, the stand-alone House vote to provide $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system was 420-9. Even if the current Israel bombing has eroded that margin a bit, it seems likely that any broad threat by Biden or any President to cut off Israeli funding would be overturned by a veto-proof majority.

That Congressional support is driven partly by AIPAC and the fundamentalist Christian Right pro-Israel lobbies but also reflects the broader public support Israel maintains. Even now, less than a third of the public thinks Biden is giving too much support to Israel. While there is a lot of disapproval of Biden’s policy on Gaza, a significant amount of that is coming from the 28% of the public that thinks the U.S. should be providing even more support for Israel.

Dilemma of Dealing With Biden and Pushing Policy Change in Palestine When Progressives are in the Political Minority

There is a real dilemna for progressives in dealing with political situations where they are in the minority politically. A lot of the anger at Biden for being insufficiently pro-Palestinian is clearly justified given the mounting death toll, but the problem is that it’s easy for protests to alienate the very swing voters needed to change policy - and targeting a partial ally like Biden can end up helping elect alternatives that are even worse, in this case Donald Trump waiting in the wings to return to power.

And Make No Mistake, Trump Would Be a Worse Disaster for the Palestinians

While some Biden critics seem to engage in the fantasy that Trump couldn’t be significantly worse than Biden, that just ignores history. Netanyahu was one of Trump’s closest foreign allies and Trump did everything possible to support Israel power over the Palestinians.

It’s somewhat forgotten but Trump had a proposal in 2000 for what to do with the Palestinians - and it involved officially recognizing Israel annexation of 30% of the West Bank and leaving Palestinians with at best nominal control over the remaining shards of land, crisscrossed by Israel security checkpoints. It also involved expelling current Israeli citizens in some Arab-majority areas near the Egyptian border and putting that population under the nominal Palestinian state. (See the map below).

Given that history of supporting annexation in the West Bank, Trump would likely be endorsing current rightwing Israeli leaders’ call to reannex Gaza as well. And he’d likely line up along with Nikki Haley in supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians out of Gaza as well.

Progressives Need More than Protest, They Need to Educate and Move Public Opinion

With polls showing that 69% of the public thinks the US is either giving the right amount of support to Israel or not enough support, even the carnage from Gaza in the news and on social media is failing to move the public to drop its broad support for Israel.

Partly it’s that the Hamas murders from October 7th still resonate for many. So a call for a ceasefire leaving Hamas in control of Gaza ends up making many Americans side with Israel as the better alternative.

What’s needed is for progressives to focus more public attention on the third alternative: ending Israeli military incursions into Gaza by restoring Palestinian Authority control and holding elections to give Palestinians a democratic voice over their own affairs while pushing for full statehood. Many Americans don’t even realize there is an alternative to Hamas among Palestinian leaders, given the current demonization of Palestinians as all being pro-Hamas. Promoting more public debate on the Palestinian Authority alternative will likely help increase support among American voters for ending Israel bombing if they recognize that an alternative to Hamas exists to run Gaza in the aftermath.

That doesn’t fit the agenda of some of the sectarian groups running current protests, since creating discord against Democratic leaders is their primary goal, but it would actually serve the interests of Palestinians to emphasize the pro-Palestinian parts of Biden’s Gaza agenda that is winnable among swing voters in the U.S. And it would make it harder for Trump to benefit from protests when his whole Israeli policy was dedicated to evicerating Palestinian democratic rights.

While I’m skeptical that a two-state solution can be successfully negotiated at this point, the effort itself will center the public imagination on the injustice of Palestinians being denied any effective democratic rights. And the effort might even help open up space for debating even more ambitious alternatives such as some kind of combined Palestinian-Israeli confederation or even combined nation to create the possibility of a more permanent peace .