Biden holds back action on Israel despite dire Gaza warnings

President Biden is showing few signs he’s prepared to punish Israel if it refuses to heed his warnings against launching an offensive in Rafah without plans to protect civilians, amid fears of a humanitarian catastrophe impacting more than a million Palestinians. 

Senate Democrats critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza succeeded in getting Biden to issue a memorandum putting Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on notice that future U.S. weapons deliveries were contingent on the scaling up of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.

However, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the driving force behind the memo, called for Biden to take concrete action.

“Unless and until the Netanyahu government allows more relief into Gaza, President Biden needs to invoke section 620-I of the Foreign Assistance Act,” he said from the Senate floor Monday, referring to the provision that blocks U.S. military assistance to any country hindering the delivery of humanitarian aid. 

“Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. … That is a war crime,” he added. “President Biden must take action in response to what is happening.”

Biden officials say they are using “diplomatic levers” to push Israel to respond to their concerns about civilian casualties and a mounting humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s war on Hamas. 

“I think the words of the president of the United States, the words of the secretary of State, matter,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said this week under questions from reporters over U.S. leverage.

“And we have seen the government of Israel respond to it. Not always in the way that we want, not always to the degree that we want or to the level that we want, but the — our interventions, we believe, have had an impact.”

But critics say the president’s words are empty without meaningful actions that compel Israel to change its conduct. The death toll from Israel’s war in Gaza is now approaching 30,000, a figure that includes Hamas fighters but is largely civilians.

“It’s all well and good for the president to say he’s concerned and wants things to happen — the actual policy is still unconditional support, and we’ve seen the results of that,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president for the Center for International Policy, describing Gaza as a dystopian wasteland.

“We’re in this bizarre situation where the president seems to have taken all the tools of actual leverage — apart from wagging his finger — off the table. We’re now in the fifth month of this catastrophe and still using the same old playbook. It’s baffling.”

Even as Biden has grown more critical rhetorically, Duss points to the administration giving up important tools of leverage by vetoing or abstaining at the United Nations Security Council on resolutions calling for a cease-fire, and twice bypassing Congress for weapons sales to Israel. 

And the administration has made no mention of holding back weapons deliveries to Israel following reports that U.S. deliveries of flour bound for Gaza are being blocked by Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

Miller, during a press briefing Tuesday, said the U.S. expects the flour to be delivered.

“We had a commitment from the government of Israel to let that flour go through, and we expect them to deliver on that commitment,” he said.

The majority of Congress, including Van Hollen, support Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, when the group launched a surprise invasion of southern Israel, killed about 1,200 people and took more than 240 hostages, more than 100 of whom remain captive.

But they criticize the conduct of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, saying that despite Hamas embedding itself in the Palestinian population, there is no justification for the civilian death toll, the scale of destruction and the humanitarian crisis of disease, starvation and mass displacement.

Aid groups and the United Nations have warned that famine is imminent. 

Van Hollen pointed out that Netanyahu had refused personal pleas from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to take concrete measures to increase humanitarian deliveries into Gaza, which were also laid out by 25 senators in a letter to the administration. 

And Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who has called for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, said that while he supports “the free, secure, and democratic State of Israel,” he opposes Netanyahu’s conduct during the war and voted against Biden’s national security supplemental with $14 billion in military assistance for Jerusalem — which includes offensive and defensive materials. 

“I cannot, in good faith, send more U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund Prime Minister Netanyahu’s relentless bombing campaign in Gaza,” he said in a statement explaining his vote.  

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, were the only other Democrats to vote against the security supplemental. 

Biden, in moments of candid criticism, has called Israel’s response in Gaza “over the top” and its bombing of the strip indiscriminate.

But he has maintained his position against calling Israel to agree to a cease-fire, saying it would only help Hamas.

Instead, the president is focused on securing a six-week truce between Israel and Hamas to allow for the release of hostages and the influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza. CIA Director William Burns is in Cairo this week to bridge the gap between Israel and Hamas in talks for a temporary cease-fire.

But time is ticking as Netanyahu is pushing to launch an offensive on Rafah, the Gazan city on the border with Egypt that is the priority crossing point for the delivery of humanitarian aid, but also one of the last refuges for Hamas and its leadership.

“Those who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically saying, lose the war. Keep Hamas there. And Hamas has promised to do the Oct. 7 massacre over and over and over again,” Netanyahu said in an interview with ABC on Sunday. He added that getting civilians out of harm’s way is “part of our war effort.” 

Biden pressed Netanyahu in a phone call earlier this week to deliver a “clear and credible” plan to take into account the safe movement of more than 1 million Palestinians who have fled to the area amid Israel’s four-month assault on Gaza. 

“We haven’t seen what the Israelis are thinking, or what exactly they’re putting pen and paper to,” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said Tuesday. “Prime Minister Netanyahu said he tasked the army, the IDF, to do exactly that. So we’ll see what they come up with.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, defended the president’s approach, pointing to the personal engagement by Blinken, Burns and Samantha Power, director of the United States Agency for International Development.

“The administration is doing a lot behind the scenes to try to get this thing resolved. The administration is also focused on, ultimately, not going back to the status quo,” he said, referring to efforts to lay groundwork for a Palestinian state post-Hamas. 

“I think that’s the ultimate goal of the administration is not to leave the status quo, but to make sure that we are much better off so we never get back to this point again.”

–Updated at 8:34 a.m.