How Biden could try to coerce Israel to change its war strategy

AS the Biden administration increasingly clashes with Israeli leaders over the war in the Gaza Strip, a question that often arises is whether US officials will try to exercise some form of harder leverage as Israel ignores their pleas.

They could do so, critics say, to try to get Israel to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza as it teeters on the brink of famine, to scale back its military campaign or to refrain from invading the Gaza city of Rafah, to which many civilians have fled.

Since the Hamas terrorist attacks Oct 7, in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed and about 240 taken hostage, Israel’s strikes have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. President Joe Biden has tried to influence Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu behind the scenes while showing strong support for Israel. Yet confrontations loom.

Israeli officials are expected to meet with their US counterparts next week in Washington to hash out opposing opinions on plans to invade Rafah. And a growing number of former US officials say Biden has to start exercising leverage to shift Israel away from what they call its disastrous war.

The Biden administration has increasingly spoken of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including mentioning it in a draft resolution on the war that it presented to the United Nations Security Council this week. The resolution called for an “immediate and sustained cease-fire” if Hamas released all hostages – a reiteration of the administration’s position, but with firmer language. Russia and China vetoed the resolution Friday. Many nations have argued for a cease-fire with no conditions.

Biden would not be the first president to use hard levers if he chooses to do so. Four administrations, from Gerald Ford’s to George Bush’s, all withheld some form of aid or diplomatic agreement or firmly threatened that they would, said Martin Indyk, a special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the Obama administration.

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“In recent years, the willingness to use the aid relationship for leverage has dramatically diminished,” he said. “The relationship of dependence is there, just waiting to be used.”

US leverage with Israel falls into three main categories. We’ll start with weapons aid, the most significant one.

Weapons Shipments

The United States is by far the largest supplier of military aid to Israel. In 2022, the aid amounted to US$3.3 billion. Since the war began, the Biden administration has pushed Congress to pass funding legislation that includes US$14 billion in additional aid, but that has been stalled mainly for reasons unrelated to the war.

Israel is depleting much of its munitions and needs the US shipments. The US government is working to approve new arms orders and has accelerated orders that were in the pipeline before the war began.

Between October and around Dec 1, the United States transferred about 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells to Israel, US officials said late last year. From Dec 1 to now, those total transfer numbers have increased by about 15 per cent, a US official said.

When Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, meets with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Washington next week, the official said, Gallant is expected to press for expedited approval of earlier requests for F-15 fighter jets worth billions and for a large batch of GPS-guided munitions kits. Gallant could also raise a potential purchase of more F-35 fighter jets, the official said.

More than 100 arms transfers have taken place since October, but almost all have occurred without notifying Congress because of loopholes in disclosure rules.

In December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken twice invoked a rarely used emergency authority to send tank ammunition and artillery shells to Israel without congressional review. Those were the only two times the administration has given public notice of government-to-government military sales to Israel since October.

If Biden ordered a slowdown or halted some or most arms transfers, Israeli leaders would get the message, current and former US officials said.

Biden has signaled he is aware of the concerns. He issued a memorandum in February that laid out standards of compliance for all countries receiving US weapons, including adhering to international humanitarian law, and required the countries to provide signed letters to the State Department promising they would abide by the rules.

Some advocates of the harder approach argue that Biden should declare that Israel is in violation of a section of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which says the United States cannot provide arms or other aid to a country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.” Eight Democratic senators sent a letter to Biden on March 11 urging him to do this.

They noted that the law does not preclude the US government from providing defensive supplies to a country violating the law, such as interceptor missiles for Israel’s Iron Dome.

The Diplomatic Shield

The United States has been a staunch ally of Israel in international institutions, where many countries have expressed outrage over the civilian casualties in Gaza.

This is especially true at the United Nations. The Biden administration has shielded Israel from diplomatic condemnations and from resolutions calling for Israel to immediately halt or suspend its war.

Less US support for Israel would open the country to more powerful formal denunciations in the United Nations.

Since the war began, the United States has exercised its veto power as a UN Security Council member to block three council resolutions calling for an immediate cease-fire with no conditions.

Sanctions

The Biden administration has refrained from imposing sanctions on Israeli officials but may be giving itself more leeway to do so. Such measures would probably be aimed more at reining in Israel’s policies and actions in the West Bank – where the current government has encouraged the expansion of settlements at a cost to Palestinians – than at curbing military operations in Gaza.

In late February, Blinken announced that the Biden administration considered new Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories to be “inconsistent with international law” – a reversal of a Trump administration policy and a return to a long-standing State Department legal assessment.

On Mar 14, the department imposed sanctions on three Israeli settlers in the West Bank whom it accused of “extremist violence” against Palestinians. The Biden administration took similar action against four Israelis on Feb 1. NYT