Tension over U.S. policy on Israel is approaching its snapping point

A tension at the heart of U.S. Mideast policy appeared this week to approach its snapping point. With two contradictory sentiments, in a strained coexistence.

The Biden administration staunchly backs Israel’s war effort; but now criticizes Israel’s war cabinet. It supports ousting Hamas, but distrusts those ousting it, questioning their long-term motives.

That tension was thrust into its fullest display in U.S. President Joe Biden’s speech Tuesday, where he offered both messages simultaneously.

He castigated far-right members of the Israeli cabinet, but at the same time vowed to keep defending Israel, which is exactly what American diplomats were doing that very moment in a debate at the United Nations.

A former U.S. Mideast negotiator interpreted one part of Biden’s speech as a warning to Israel: America wants changes, or it could dial down its support.

“A blinking yellow light,” is how Aaron David Miller described the speech, speaking to CBC News.

He says the point of rupture in this scenario — the so-called red light — would be the U.S. slow-walking the delivery of weapons, or failing to defend Israel at the UN.

UN votes to demand Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Canada votes in favour

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of demanding a humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the immediate release of hostages and the protection of all civilians. In a shift in stance since the start of the war, Canada voted in favour of an immediate ceasefire.

Though Miller expressed doubt the governments would ever get to such a breaking point.

One way to view Biden’s eye-popping remarks this week is through the prism of domestic politics: Biden is trying to keep his own party united amid divisions over the Mideast conflict that have hurt his poll numbers and re-election prospects.

We could soon see whether the president’s frustrations with the Israeli government have any tangible effects on the international stage.

There will be a chance to take the temperature of the relationship between the countries in the coming days as the U.S. is planning two major trips to Israel. First is a visit from the White House national security adviser, starting Thursday, followed by the U.S. secretary of defence, next week.

Biden trashes extremists in Netanyahu cabinet

Their visits come right after Biden levelled extraordinarily serious charges against the Israeli government.

For starters, he accused Israel of conducting indiscriminate bombing.

But he also went much further, appearing to urge a cabinet shuffle — calling for “changes” in the war cabinet. That sort of public request from one democratic leader to another would be virtually unprecedented.

More explicitly, he denounced extremists in the government who view their enemy not just as Hamas — but as the Palestinian people.

Biden went on to call these officials an obstacle to a durable long-term peace, which he says must include hope for Palestinian statehood.

“They don’t want a two-state solution. They don’t want anything having to do with the Palestinians,” Biden said in his speech to Democratic Party donors.

“You cannot say there’s no Palestinian state at all in the future.”

Three times in his speech, Biden singled out one man in particular: Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

This is the same Ben-Gvir who long kept a framed picture on his wall of a mass-murderer who killed 29 Arabs. Who pulled a gun on Palestinians, and publicly threatened Yitzhak Rabin weeks before the peace-seeking Israeli prime minister was assassinated in 1995.

Biden could just as easily have been referring to Bezalel Smotrich — the finance minister who has said there should be no Palestinians at all, as the founders of Israel should have thrown all the Arabs out from their land.

There are other examples Biden didn’t name, but who illustrate his point that the Netanyahu cabinet has no interest in seeing a Palestinian state. Like the minister who was suspended for musing about dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip.

Or Israeli minister Shlomo Karhi, who said a Palestinian state will never happen. Or the Israeli ambassador to the U.K. who said the same when asked about a future Palestinian homeland.

Biden also didn’t personally criticize the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose fragile political survival may now rest on maintaining his uneasy alliance with the above-mentioned figures.

In public remarks Wednesday, Netanyahu said nothing will deter Israel — not even international pressure.

Don’t expect abrupt U.S. policy changes

One longtime Middle East watcher wonders whether U.S. officials might be about to push their Israeli allies to end the war by a certain date.

Michael Lynk said he was struck that the public remarks came from Biden, who has for years been a reliable defender of Israel.

“You can be sure that in private they’re saying much harsher things,” said Lynk, a former United Nations rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories, now at Western University in London, Ont.

“You’re talking about an administration that has a naturally reflexive pro-Israel stance. Joe Biden has always defined himself as a Zionist.”

Miller sounded skeptical of any imminent U.S. policy changes.

He urged anyone struck by Biden’s criticisms of the Netanyahu cabinet to read the entire text of the speech.

The criticism, he said, consisted of three or four pointed comments embedded in what Miller described as “a love letter” to Israel.

He said no other American president has such deep connections to leaders in Israel, going back to former prime minister Golda Meir in the 1970s.

“Support for Israel is imprinted on his emotional, and his political, DNA,” Miller said of Biden, noting that though the president’s remarks were important, the key is to “watch what he does.”

Even as Biden spoke, U.S. diplomats were at the United Nations, siding with Israel in a lopsided vote against a ceasefire resolution backed by most of the world, including Canada.

In his speech, Biden vigorously defended Israel’s operations against Hamas.

“In the meantime, we’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel,” he said. “Not a single thing.” He referred to Hamas as terrorist “animals” and said they must be held accountable for their acts of brutality on Oct. 7.

Palestinian statehood ‘in a galaxy far, far away’

One area of widespread agreement among experts is that, even after this war, the path to Palestinian statehood will be extraordinarily hard, and long.

Lynk listed a litany of challenges.

One is the near-disappearance of an Israeli left. When Rabin signed the Oslo peace accords in the 1990s, his Labour Party had won 44 seats in the Israeli Knesset, and its ally Meretz had 12. Today, Labour has four and Meretz has zero.

That leaves the modern Israeli centre, which professes support for a two-state solution. But its leader Yair Lapid also defends Israel’s right to build settlements in the West Bank, which would complicate the creation of a Palestinian state.

With a U.S. election next year, Lynk doubts much political energy will be spent pushing for a statehood process. “This, I’m afraid, will probably be forgotten as well.”

Miller, who worked on the Oslo accords, called it a longer-term project, and said a more immediate concern is determining who will administer and police Gaza.

He said if Biden wasn’t distracted by next year’s election he could try organizing a conference, like the 1991 Madrid summit, or lay out a framework for statehood talks — eventually.

That’s “in a galaxy far, far away,” Miller said. “But the frame — creating the frame could happen.”