To recap: The U.S. government, at the behest of President Biden, has implored Netanyahu to halt a planned invasion of Rafah and to accept a cease-fire deal that could bring an end to the war. Netanyahu has rebuffed both requests. The United States has sent billions in weapons to Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. Biden has vocally defended Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, even as outrage has grown over the tens of thousands of innocent civilians, many of them children, who have been killed during that campaign. Israel’s response? Here’s what one official told NBC News after news broke that America was withholding weapons. “An Israeli official told NBC News there is deep frustration in the Israeli government over the decision. The official added that tensions had already been running high after Israel felt the U.S. allowed it to be blindsided by Hamas’ announcement earlier this week that it was accepting a version of a cease-fire proposal.” Nothing less than total support—and unending military aid—is acceptable.
The reasonable conclusion here is not that America has suddenly failed to influence Netanyahu but that it never had any influence to begin with. Netanyahu was happy to accept Biden’s backing—and his literal embrace—when it aligned with his own objectives: continuing the war indefinitely, no matter the immense human cost. The Biden administration has rightfully acknowledged that Israel is not heeding any of its warnings or recommendations and is, in response, trying to goad the country both through diplomacy and the withholding of armaments. It is unlikely that this will work because Netanyahu has shown time and time again that no one—not even Israel’s main ally, which unconditionally gives the country billions in military aid every year—can tell him what to do.
And what is the U.S. telling him to do, anyway? The Biden administration has struggled to articulate what the “red line” on Rafah really is: For the moment, it seems like the IDF can avoid stepping over that line by simply conducting a series of seemingly isolated military actions that ultimately, in the aggregate, constitute a full invasion. The Biden administration, given its stated acceptance of the IDF’s efforts to secure the Rafah crossing, will seemingly let them do it.
