Biden, a supposed foreign policy pragmatist, doesn’t seem bothered that the US is one of the few states that continues to wholeheartedly sustain Israel’s war on Gaza. In fact, Biden has staked his political future on his support for Netanyahu and Israel – and Biden is losing. In this year’s presidential election, where he will most likely face Donald Trump once again, Biden has already lost support among young progressives, Black and Arab American voters, who are all rightfully angry at his refusal to restrain Israel.
Biden allies are raising the alarm that he could lose Michigan, a swing state with substantial Black, Arab and Muslim American voting blocs, because of his Middle East policies. Congressman Ro Khanna, a Biden supporter and progressive Democrat from California who has tried to mediate between Biden’s campaign and Michigan Democrats, warned his team this week: “We cannot win Michigan with status quo policy.”
The Biden administration has consistently underplayed the leverage it has over Israel and Netanyahu. “I think that sometimes people pretend that the United States of America has a magic wand that it can wave to make any situation in the world roll out in exactly the way that we would want it to and that is never the case,” Matthew Miller, the state department spokesperson, said at a press conference on 12 February.
Miller’s flippant comment raises an important question: if Biden can’t use billions of dollars in military aid – and the ability to literally cut off Israel’s supply of bombs – to force Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, what could Biden do with a magic wand?
How’s he supposed to force a permanent ceasefire when neither side wants to even agree to a temporary one?
The Palestinians already have a deal on the table for a permanent ceasefire.
Israel just doesn’t need to accept it because Joe Biden keeps sending them more weapons to commit Genocide with.
What deal? Both sides just walked away from a temporary ceasefire deal this week.
There was no “deal” this week. Just a nothing-burger.
Israel refused the permanent ceasefire that was offered by Hamas. Then they said “Give us all the hostages and then we will continue to kill you after a few weeks” to which Hamas said “no that’s stupid I’m not going to give up my leverage”.
The deal that was presented by Hamas a few weeks ago is still on the table. But Netanyahu didn’t want that because it would end his war.
Was that the deal that fell through because Hamas doesn’t want to release everyone? It’s really getting hard to keep track.
And I think you can tell that at the end of the day Biden can’t force jack shit. Taking away resources is not going to lead to peace it’s going to make everyone more desperate and irrational.
That deal seems to be a similar deal from israel as they one they presented before the permanent ceasefire offer from Hamas.
The article this post is about sure thinks otherwise:
Congress WANTS to send that money. Biden can’t just unilaterally cut that off without risking big consequences back home, like a government shutdown.
Also, those last 2 paragraphs you quoted sum up the problem quite well.
Biden bypassed congress to send weapons to israel. Because Congress did not want to pass the bill with those weapons (not for the most moral reason but at least they blocked it).
And Biden most certainly can single handedly cut off the weapons supply by just saying israel commits war crimes. Which would by law prevent America from giving them more weapons.
maybe by not vetoing the UN’s security council resolutions.
Twice. (and yes. that’s his decision to make.)
Maybe by vetoing any domestic spending bills that include support for Israel (and signalling this to both houses of congress. yeah. Support for Israel is going to be a rider with Ukraine, so it’s going to be more complicated. edited to fix this,)
Maybe by sanctioning Israeli leaders involved in the Genocide.
maybe by not going out of his way to expedite arms sales.
Ya lost me at not supporting Ukraine funding.
And why no mentions of forcing Hamas to release all the hostages?
That was a brain fart on my part, I just fixed it.
Because that’s pretty fucking self-evident? Not sure what releasing the hostages would do, besides freeing the hostages- which to be clear is important on it’s own- but as far as the Genocide… Israel doesn’t care about the hostages except as a propaganda piece. Which is why they’ve killed orders of magnitudes more than they’ve freed.
Edit: it should be noted that Hamas has a standing offer to free their hostages if Isreal frees the 5k “prisoners” they keep without due process. (many of whom were swept up on the same day of the last exchange.)
The answer to your question could just have been this:
That’s what flipped me around on the issue.
Can he singlehandedly tell Israel what to do? Maybe I guess, but probably not. Israel knows we aren’t going to send the US Army in to defend Gaza. But he absolutely could have not sent the order to veto those resolutions. And he could have refused to send further weapons to Israel until there is a change.
Those measures would not be enough to satisfy many people, but they would demonstrate that he’s doing more than not speaking as glowingly about Israel as he would have prior to October 2023, which is about all he seems to have done so far. It would be possible to defend his decisions at that point. Currently I don’t see how it is.
Thrice even. They blocked another one last week: US blocks ceasefire call with third UN veto in Israel-Hamas war