President Joe Biden’s scheduled call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday will not simply test the leaders’ increasingly sour relationship.
It will also highlight a glaring contradiction in US policy toward the war in Gaza, a conflict that potentially poses an existential threat to both of their political careers.
While Biden is expressing growing frustration about the Israeli leader’s conduct of the military onslaught and its impact on civilians – including the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza this week – the fundamentals of staunch US support for Israel are not shifting. And at the same time as the White House is demanding changes to Israeli procedures to shield civilians, warning a planned assault on Rafah could cause a humanitarian disaster, the administration is moving toward approving a sale of F-15 warplanes to Israel worth $18 billion, sources told CNN this week.
The Biden-Netanyahu call will also come amid renewed fears in Washington that Israel’s actions could spark the regional conflagration that Biden has been desperate to avoid. A strike on senior Iranian officers in Syria on Monday, which the US attributes to Israel, has drawn vows of retaliation, which could again put US troops in the region at risk.
The conversation will also take place with both leaders under enormous domestic pressure and amid signs their political priorities are irreconcilable. Biden badly needs the war to end to ease anger among progressives that is threatening his weakened political coalition ahead of November’s election. But Netanyahu may need to prolong it to stave off elections many US leaders believe he would lose. It’s not impossible that the crisis could end up driving both of them out of office.
Biden conducts tough-talking phone calls with world leaders as a…
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