President Joe Biden‘s threat this week to cut off the U.S. supply of offensive weapons to Israel has been months in the making.
Biden was quick to come to Israel’s support on Oct. 7, after Hamas carried out an unprecedented terrorist attack in the southern part of the country that left more than 1,200 people dead. But Israel’s military response to the rampage has threatened its relationship with the United States.
“You know, when I spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning, I told him the United States stands with the people of Israel in the face of this terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people. Full stop,” he said in public remarks on Oct. 7. “And my administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.”
HOW BIDEN’S POSITION ON ISRAEL HAS CHANGED SINCE OCT. 7
In the seven months since those comments, the United States has routinely urged Israel to do more to protect innocent civilians in Gaza while it continued to provide them with offensive and defensive military capabilities.
But the death toll has progressively increased as the humanitarian crisis worsened, both at the hands of the Israelis and despite public U.S. posturing.
The U.S. has repeatedly shared its concerns about a major ground operation in Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza, where more than one million Palestinians have sought refuge from the war. Despite multiple meetings and calls between U.S. and Israeli leaders over several weeks, the U.S. has been unable to convince the Israelis they can accomplish their goals in Rafah without a full-scale ground incursion, while the Israelis have been unable to persuade the U.S. that they have a plan that will adequately safeguard the civilians in Rafah.
It halted a shipment last week of thousands of large bombs to Israel and is still reviewing whether to send them to Israel. The paused shipment included 1,800 2,000 lb bombs and another 1,700 500 lb bombs, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Thursday. The U.S. was concerned with the type of damage these weapons could do in an urban and densely populated area like Rafah.
“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem,” Biden said in a CNN interview that aired on Wednesday. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers.”
National Security Council coordinator John Kirby affirmed on Thursday that the president made his stance “crystal clear” that if they “do smash into Rafah, go in and invade in a major way,” he will have to reconsider future aid to Israel.
His comments came days after Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of parts of Rafah and began limited ground operations.
U.S. officials said Israel’s military needed to do more to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians back in November and early December, during the first weeks of Israel’s ground operations in the strip. Those instructions from the U.S. have not stopped the Israelis from continuing to pursue their objectives of defeating Hamas and removing them from power, which has resulted in a death toll that is now believed to be higher than 34,000 people, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, though that figure does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Hamas has spent years and billions of dollars building a significant underground tunnel system to hide from Israeli forces and airstrikes. The tunnels provide them with cover from the fighting above and has allowed them to keep the hostages hidden. Hamas intentionally embeds itself under densely populated areas forcing Israel to either not attack them or risk killing civilians. Israel disputes the Gaza death toll but is also not forthcoming with its own data.
Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman recently told Piers Morgan during a contentious interview that the death toll is inaccurate, that they had killed roughly 14,000 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters, but couldn’t provide a statistic for how many civilians Israel believes it has killed during the war.
Despite the rhetoric, the Biden administration continued to provide Israel with billions of dollars of military support, which fueled discontent within the president’s own party at home. While Biden did not face a serious primary challenger, pro-Palestinian activists demonstrated their frustration with his support for Israel by not voting for him and instead supporting a write-in campaign that proved their coalition of voters could threaten the president’s chances of winning his reelection bid.
Biden has primarily lost support from Arab Americans and the youngest generation of voters due to his continued support for Israel. Dozens of universities across the U.S. have experienced waves of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments that have at times gotten violent as well as antisemitic in recent weeks.
A pivotal moment that altered Biden’s stance toward Israel occurred on April 1, when the Israel Defense Forces killed seven aid workers in a group of airstrikes.
The workers had coordinated their location with the military, and were traveling in a marked car at the time their vehicle was hit. The strike prompted international condemnation.
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In the aftermath of the strike, Biden spoke with Netanyahu, and he threatened to condition future military aid to Israel if it did not allow more humanitarian aid to get into Gaza and to protect those who were involved with its distribution. It marked the first time during the war the U.S. attempted to leverage its military aid to get Israel to act in a specific way.
The president, in the CNN interview, reiterated that his support for Israel’s security remains unchanged. The needle he’s trying to thread is that the U.S. will at least continue to provide weapons to ensure Israel’s national security — like Iron Dome missiles — but not its offensive operations in Rafah.
