By the time Biden arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday — amid Israeli airstrikes that had already killed more than 3,000 Palestinians inside Gaza, an ongoing siege that left millions of civilians without food and water and preparations for a full-scale Israeli ground assault of the enclave — the need to buy time for Israel “to think this through,” in the words of one U.S. official, had become a core objective of the trip.
Neither Biden, nor Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin or others in direct contact with their Israeli counterparts, told them what to do or what not to do, according to public statements and interviews with a range of senior administration and foreign officials who discussed the tumultuous and sensitive days of the past two weeks on the condition of anonymity.
But worry was growing in Washington, and its outreach culminated with Biden’s seven and a half hours on the ground in Israel. In meetings with Netanyahu and his cabinet, the president expressed his concerns and posed questions.
What if there is more Hamas resistance to a ground attack than you anticipate, and your forces get bogged down? What about humanitarian aid? How will you protect civilians? What about the hundreds of Israelis and foreigners being held hostage? What if the West Bank becomes a war zone? If Hezbollah attacks from the north? If Iran gets directly involved?
And then came the longer-term concerns, something the Israelis, in their immediate rage, seemed less interested in contemplating: If you succeed in destroying Hamas, what will you do with Gaza? And what will happen to your hopes — and ours — for broader Middle East peace?
Biden reminded the Israelis of the “mistakes” the United States had made as it struck out in fury after the al-Qaeda attacks in September 2001, he told reporters on Air Force One as he traveled back to Washington on Wednesday night.
“I cautioned the government of Israel not to be blinded by rage,” he said.
Two weeks after the surprise Hamas attack, even as the Biden administration continues to extend full-throated support for Israel, it is trying to prevent the nightmare scenario 0f a wider regional war. World attention has already begun shifting from sympathy for murdered Israelis to concern for the plight of Palestinian civilians and criticism of U.S. support for Israel. Anger at the airstrikes and the long history Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation of both the West Bank and Gaza is boiling over in Arab capitals, with massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations and attacks on U.S. and European embassies.
U.S. forces in the region, including two naval carrier groups sent to the eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent to outside involvement, are at risk of being drawn into the conflict. Missile and drone attacks against American troops in Iraq and Syria, which had largely ceased last spring as the administration renewed tentative engagement with Iran, have started up again. On Friday a U.S. destroyer in the Red Sea intercepted cruise missiles launched toward Israel by Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.
Meanwhile, the administration’s hopes for an expansion of the Abraham Accords — the Trump-era diplomatic rapprochement between some Arab countries and Israel — now seem indefinitely postponed, if not doomed.
The diplomacy of ‘being there’
Even before Blinken left on Oct. 11 for a trip originally scheduled with stops in Israel and Jordan, his itinerary had been expanded to include Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. In Israel, he repeated unbreakable U.S. backing for its right to self-defense. In Arab capitals, he was told of the need to rein in Israel’s response and help the Gaza Palestinians, whose plight increasingly dominated global media.
Austin had decided shortly after the Hamas attack that he wanted to go to Israel to demonstrate U.S. support — including major arms shipments — as well as to show potential outside belligerents that the United States was invested in the region. With a trip to a NATO meeting in Brussels already scheduled, he added a stop in Tel Aviv.
“It’s a really important opportunity when you’re there to really talk through how the Israelis are approaching what is in many ways a historic challenge,” a senior U.S. defense official said in an interview.
The defense…
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