Washington:
Days after the October 7 attack, Joe Biden walked onto the tarmac in Tel Aviv and offered Benjamin Netanyahu a warm bear hug, a sign of both solid support for Israel and the US president's long, if not uncomplicated, relationship with the prime minister.
Seven months after the devastating conflict, the soft approach is over. Biden, who once memorably wrote to Netanyahu, “I love you,” has for the first time raised the issue of the United States' ultimate leverage over Israel: military aid, which totals $3 billion a year.
Biden — whose support for Israel despite civilian casualties had roiled the left of his Democratic Party months before the election — is outraged that Netanyahu has rejected calls to stay out of Rafah, the southern Gaza city where the United Nations says some provide shelter to 1.4 million displaced Palestinians.
Biden administration officials initially saw Netanyahu's promises to attack Rafah as rhetorical. But in talks with the prime minister, including a visit last week by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. officials are convinced Netanyahu means business.
Biden vowed in an interview with DailyExpertNews on Wednesday to stop delivering bombs and artillery shells if Israel continues in Rafah, after his administration confirmed it had already halted a shipment of thousands of bombs.
Biden, who last spoke to Netanyahu on Monday, has made his case against Rafah “repeatedly and candidly,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, adding that the invasion was now “a choice that Israel will have to make '.
“We hope that won't be the case,” Kirby said.
Netanyahu – who has vowed to eliminate Hamas, which carried out the deadliest ever attack on Israel on October 7 – has publicly dismissed Biden's warnings.
“If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone,” he said.
Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Herzog, said that while he had “complete admiration” for Biden, the threat to withhold US weapons was “unacceptable” and “sends the wrong message” to Israel's opponents.
Biden's Republican rival in the November election, former President Donald Trump, accused Biden of siding with Hamas.
But Trump's relations are also tense with Netanyahu, who quickly acknowledged Biden's victory in the 2020 election, which Trump refused to concede.
Another fight for Bibi
Battles with Washington are familiar territory for the hawkish Netanyahu.
Israel's longest-serving prime minister, who knows the United States well having been his country's main ally for years, clashed bitterly with the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Netanyahu, along with Obama's Republican rivals, openly campaigned against his nuclear diplomacy with Iran, leaving lasting resentment among many Democrats.
But Biden, Obama's vice president, was known internally for advocating keeping the Israelis close and expressing his concerns privately.
Biden's approach stems as much from his history with Israel as from the importance he placed on personal relationships.
Biden has often talked about traveling to Israel as a young senator shortly after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and being briefed by chain-smoking Prime Minister Golda Meir.
At a 2010 event, Biden said his father, shocked by the Holocaust, said his love for Israel “started in my stomach and went to my heart” and that his father vocally supported the creation of the state of Israel.
In the same remarks, Biden described Netanyahu as a “close, personal friend” for decades, saying Biden had met the future Israeli leader, known by his nickname Bibi, when he was a young diplomat in Washington.
In a later speech, Biden described a photo he once gave to Netanyahu and said he wrote on it: “Bibi, I don't agree with what you say, but I love you.”
'The bear hug didn't work'
Allison McManus, managing director for national security and international policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said that regardless of the two leaders' histories, their interests were “completely contradictory.”
“This is not necessarily a personal friendship that will somehow overshadow the strong political interests of each of these leaders,” she said.
“This is a moment where I think Biden realizes that the bear hug hasn't worked. The strong, stern words didn't work,” she said. “Withholding the weapons is the greatest tool of influence the US has.”
But she noted that Biden made a threat rather than simply holding back the guns.
With that, Biden “leaves the door for Netanyahu to withdraw from Rafah,” she said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)