Biden seeks to pull rank in US-Israel relationship – a trial of strength beckons

Joe Biden at the White House in April before signing a $95bn aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

In placing a hold on a shipment of US-made bombs to Israel, and warning there could be more restrictions to come, Joe Biden is sending a message to Benjamin Netanyahu that his administration is no longer prepared to be a dog wagged by its own tail.

Netanyahu’s repeated defiance of US warnings not to pursue an offensive on Rafah had been based on an assumption that curbing the US weapons supply could inflict more political damage on Biden than on the Israeli prime minister, and that Netanyahu could cause havoc for the president at home at the height of an election year.

The Biden White House is now seeking to turn that assumption on its head. Administration officials are prohibited from using the words “red” and “line” together in a sentence, after Barack Obama’s unfulfilled ultimatum to Syria over chemical weapons. But for Biden, it was a critical juncture: a red line in all but name.

Not only was the shipment of thousands of 2000lb and 500lb bombs put on hold, but the administration made no effort to disguise it, as a logistical problem, for example. Officials briefed reporters about it, and then the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, put it on the record before a Senate committee, making clear there could be other arms consignments that could face similar delays.

US officials are talking of a hinge point in the relationship, in which this suspended arms package could be just the first manifestation, depending on how Israel now acts in Rafah.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) do not need these bombs to invade Rafah. They have more than enough stockpiles to reduce it to rubble. The significance of Biden’s move is symbolic – all the more so because such actions towards Israel are exceedingly rare. The last US president to put an arms shipment on hold was Ronald Reagan.

Israeli politicians have vented their fury at the administration in phone calls over recent days, and Netanyahu and his close allies in the Republican party will undoubtedly seek to hit back in the US political arena, portraying Biden as leaving Israel “defenceless”.

The Republican senator Lindsey Graham was the first to hurl the allegation.

“This is obscene. It is absurd,” Graham said in a statement on Wednesday. “Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can’t afford to lose.”

Israeli officials told the Axios news site, which first broke the news of the delayed arms shipment, that the president’s decision could sabotage hostages-for-ceasefire talks under way in Cairo.

US officials push back against that suggestion. Since Hamas’s public acceptance of one version of a ceasefire deal on Monday, the administration is focusing pressure on Israel. The arms hold, and the threat of more, could make the Israelis more open to compromise, and give Hamas more confidence that Washington would seek to ensure a ceasefire would become a more lasting peace deal – an uncertainty which has been the main obstacle to an agreement in recent weeks.

Even if Biden’s gambit does prolong peace talks, administration officials argue it is a price worth paying because the humanitarian consequences of an offensive on Rafah would be so catastrophic for the more than 1 million people in Gaza sheltering in the city.

The administration is adamant that this was a policy decision, not a legal one, though the dropping of 2,000lb bombs – of the kind in the paused shipment – on densely populated areas are widely seen by human rights lawyers as prima facie evidence of war crimes.

The US, however, is anxious not to make its judgments on international human law a factor in investigations being conducted by the international criminal court and the international court of justice, which is weighing the charge of genocide. The US military is also keen not to set any general legal precedents restricting the use of weapons in its own arsenal.

For that reason, officials in Washington predict that the state department’s report on Israeli compliance with international humanitarian law, expected this week, will not make sweeping legal judgments. Policy on supplying arms to Israel, they say, will instead be announced by the president.

This paused delivery of bombs is just one step towards recalibrating the US-Israel relationship. Netanyahu and his government will now respond, and will seek to deter Biden, politically, from making any further steps in the same direction. A trial of strength beckons. The American dog is just beginning to regain control of its tail, and there are no guarantees it will succeed.