Mohamad Elmasry
Al-Jazeera / August 5, 2024
When challenged by the Israeli government, Washington has chosen acquiescence.
In 2023, a few months before the start of the current Israel-Gaza conflagration, renowned American scholar Noam Chomsky was asked about the state of the relationship between the United States and Israel.
Chomsky indicated that a shift is taking place.
Historically, he said, “when the United States demanded that [Israel] do something, it would do it.”
Chomsky observed that things have changed in recent years as Israeli political leaders have become outspoken about asserting Israel’s independence from the US.
“It’s the first time the confrontation [between the US and Israel] has been this clear, and it’s not clear how the United States will respond,” he stated.
Israel’s current war on Gaza has now revealed what the US response would be to Israeli intransigence: acquiescence.
Rather than use its considerable leverage to force Israeli compliance with American positions, President Joe Biden’s administration has consistently yielded to Israel. This response not only is encouraging perceptions abroad of America’s weakness, but it could also have damaging repercussions for its internal affairs and even democracy.
A pattern of acquiescence
There is no question that the US has been on board with much of Israel’s war plan, including its goal of destroying Hamas, nor is there any question that the Biden administration has signed off on much of the violence Israel has carried out in Gaza to date.
However, there is also mounting evidence that Israel has consistently disregarded US government positions, advice and concerns about its war conduct.
This has repeatedly forced the Biden administration to shift its positions and rhetoric to be more in line with Israel’s.
A case in point is the Biden administration’s December push to get Israel to wrap up major combat operations in Gaza, which the Israeli government ignored.
Embarrassed by images of Palestinian civilian casualties, Biden said on December 12 that Israel’s bombing of Gaza seemed “indiscriminate”.
On December 14, Biden called on the Israeli military to “save civilian lives” and “be more careful” in carrying out attacks.
On December 18, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urged Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to be more “surgical” in his attacks on Gaza, move to a “lower intensity” phase of war and “reduce harm to civilians”.
But Israel’s immediate response was to intensify attacks on civilian areas. For example, on December 14, at least 179 Palestinians were killed, including dozens of members of two families whose homes the Israeli army bombed. Dozens of Palestinians were also killed on December 15, including more than 30 people sheltering in a United Nations school in Khan Younis. Similarly, large casualty numbers were reported through the rest of December.
The familiar pattern re-emerged when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the region in early January.
Just before he arrived, Israel targeted and killed Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh and his colleague Mustafa Thuraya. While Blinken made remarks about his desire to see the war “end as soon as possible”, Israel killed more than 126 Palestinians in a 24-hour period.
Despite other calls from US officials to protect civilians, Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools and camps for the displaced have not lessened to this day.
Israeli disregard for US concerns and warnings was even more apparent in the lead-up to the ground invasion of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
In March, a government cable was leaked suggesting the US believed the operation would be “catastrophic” for Palestinian civilians.
Shortly after, Biden said in an interview that an offensive on Rafah was a “red line” for him. Other US officials also voiced their opposition to it, including Vice President Kamala Harris.
After it became clear Israel was going to invade Rafah with our without US approval, the US subtly shifted its rhetoric to saying that a Rafah offensive would require “serious planning”. As the Israeli army intensified its attacks and penetrated deeper into the city, the Biden administration maintained it was not crossing any “red lines”.
The invasion resulted in the displacement of more than a million Palestinians and the massacres of scores of others – among them 45 people who were killed in an Israeli attack on a tent camp that had previously been declared a “safe zone”.
Throughout the 10 months of war, Israel has also systematically ignored US demands that it increase the supply of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.
Worse still, it has actually pursued a clear policy of forced starvation of Palestinian civilians.
Unable to persuade Israel to open essential land crossings and perhaps hoping to distract from the humanitarian catastrophe, the Biden administration decided to send its own military personnel to build a $320m makeshift pier off the coast of Gaza.
The pier, which was criticized as grossly insufficient for aid delivery, wouldn’t have come close to meeting Gaza’s needs even if it had been fully functional. Weeks after it was installed, the pier had to be removed because it kept breaking apart.
The mere fact that the US had to build a pier – effectively as a workaround for Israeli obstinance and obstructionism – should be seen as an embarrassment for the Biden administration.
Compromising American interests
As the death toll in Gaza has mounted, outrage among Americans has grown. This sentiment, which is particularly strong among Democratic voters, has translated into political action with campaigns calling to “abandon Biden” in the November election, vote “uncommitted” in Democratic primaries and join protests, including on hundreds of university campuses.
Feeling the domestic pressure, on May 31, Biden announced a ceasefire plan he claimed was put forward by Israel.
His administration repeatedly indicated that the Israeli government had already accepted the deal. However, recent reports from Israeli media suggest that Netanyahu manipulated Biden, apparently lying to him about Israeli intentions.
Even if it wasn’t immediately obvious that Netanyahu was lying, the writing should have been on the wall for the US administration.
The Israeli prime minister repeatedly refused to publicly say he agreed to a ceasefire and made it clear through action that he was committed to undermining it.
Netanyahu intensified, rather than reduced, attacks on Gaza and continually said he wasn’t going to end the war until Israel achieves “total victory”.
More recently, Israel assassinated chief Palestinian negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, an action that was likely planned while intense ceasefire negotiations were going on.
The Biden administration should have known better than to think the Israeli government was serious about a ceasefire. It should also have known better than to put itself in such a position of weakness.
The conventional wisdom in international affairs is that the US, as the world’s only superpower and the main sponsor of the Israeli military, holds leverage over its much smaller ally.
The past 10 months, however, have demonstrated that the shoe is on the other foot: It is Israel that has more influence over the US government, which has yielded to its diktats at almost every turn of the Gaza war.
The end result has been more and more embarrassment for the Biden administration with some analysts suggesting that the US appears to be the “junior partner” in the US-Israel relationship.
More importantly, though, in allowing Israel to dictate the terms of the Gaza war, the US has compromised its own interests.
The US recently sent ships and fighter jets to the Middle East and stands on the verge of an all-out regional war, something which it has been desperate to avoid.
If the US goes to war, it will be doing so not because it needs to or wants to. It will be doing so on Israel’s behalf. It would be a fitting, but unfortunate, end to almost a full year of acquiescing to Israel.
When the dust from the Gaza war settles, the US will be seen as complicit in genocide, the crime of crimes, and America’s global standing will be severely compromised.
But the ramification for US politics would be even more far-reaching.
Democrats have earned the wrath of young Americans critical of Israel, something that may well cost them the White House in November.
In possibly enabling the re-election of Donald Trump, the Biden administration may be costing America more than just some of its strategic imperatives.
It may be costing it its democracy.
Mohamad Elmasry – Professor in the Media Studies program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
