In light of the events of this week, it seems that Biden’s support for Israel, which has been at war with the terrorist group Hamas since October, has its border after all – Rafah. The city in the southern Gaza Strip has become a refuge for more than a million displaced Palestinian civilians, and the Israeli army is preparing for its full military occupation.
According to the United Nations (UN), nearly 80,000 people have fled the city since Monday, when Israel took control of the border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip and called on Palestinians to evacuate. However, a large number of civilians still remain in the area, and in addition to fears of an attack by Israeli soldiers, the humanitarian crisis in the city is intensifying.
Developments around Rafah are causing outrage in the United States, and on Wednesday US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed reports that the US has suspended planned ammunition deliveries to Israel and is currently reassessing its immediate military support to the country. Israeli officials then expressed strong indignation at the Americans.
However, the gap between the US and Israel deepened after President Joe Biden made a public statement. In an interview with CNN, he said that Washington will stop the supply of weapons to Israeli forces if the invasion of Rafah really takes place. Thus far, he has publicly weakened the alliance between the countries, which until now presented itself as strong.
He even openly acknowledged that the weapons that the US supplied to Israel had killed civilians in the Middle East.
A Widening Gap?
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote in a post on Platform X that Hamas loves Biden, and Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar said on the same network that it was “amazing to find out that the world has forgotten what happened on October 7 happened in Israel”. Let us recall that at that time terrorists from Hamas attacked Israel, killed about 1200 people and kidnapped others. In response, the Jewish state launched an attack on the Gaza Strip.
Biden’s promises and growing disagreements about the next step are thus testing the relations between the two countries.
The US is appealing for a truce between the two camps. Although Israel is showing a willingness to act and a will to some form of truce, on the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has let it be known that his goal is a total victory over Hamas. He then intends to continue the attack on Rafah even in the event of a ceasefire.
For example, the ceasefire proposal that Egypt came up with is now being discussed. And while Hamas announced on Monday evening that it agreed with the proposal, Israel made it clear that it did not agree with it, even though the Egyptian text, according to some sources, differs only slightly from the proposal that the United States worked out with Israel at the end of April.
What happens in the coming days could have serious consequences for American-Israeli relations. Not to mention that the Biden administration is supposed to submit an opinion in Congress on whether the Israeli military operation was conducted in accordance with humanitarian law, which could also comment on whether war crimes were committed.
Biden thus finds himself in a difficult situation, since a positive answer to this question should mean for the US to cut off aid to Israel. However, limiting the supply of weapons to this Middle Eastern country would weaken its influence precisely in securing a ceasefire or humanitarian aid, while agreeing to an offensive would damage it.
A scarecrow in the form of an election?
Biden could suffer especially at home, where the American attitude towards events in the Middle East resonates mainly with the American-Arab minority and young voters, who are traditionally a key part of the Democratic voter base. It is their votes that the president will need in November when defending his mandate.
American aid to Israel
As reported in March of this year by the US Congress, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of military aid to its allies since World War II. Over the past decades, the United States has provided Israel with bilateral aid and military financing worth 158 billion dollars, i.e. more than 3.6 trillion crowns.
As for 2023, the US has earmarked $3.8 billion for Israeli military funding. This is part of a ten-year agreement signed during the administration of former US President Barack Obama, which committed to allocating a total of $38 billion in military aid to the Middle Eastern country between 2019 and 2028.
For example, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gil’ad Erdan, already indicated in an interview with the Israeli Channel 12 television that the decision to suspend the supply of ammunition was the result of political pressure on Biden from Congress, pro-Palestinian protests at American universities and the upcoming elections.
Publicly, the US leadership cites the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as the reason, to what extent the decision was also supported by the events directly across the ocean, one can only speculate.
As Seznam Zprávy reported earlier, the events in the Middle East and his current approach to it could easily contribute to Biden losing the White House. According to a CNN poll from the end of April, 81% of voters under the age of 35 disagree with the way the president is handling the whole situation.
