Biden talks of Gaza ‘red line’ for Israel, but his options are limited

Already agitated United States-Israel relations have taken a further dive – to what some say is their lowest point ever – as the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip has worsened.

First, President Joe Biden put Israel on notice that it’s on the brink of crossing a “red line” if it proceeds with plans for an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah – thus using with a close ally a blunt warning that recent presidents reserved for adversaries like Syria and North Korea.

Then Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer – the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S. – cautioned Israel that it risks becoming a “pariah” state as a result of the war-caused devastation and growing risk of famine in Gaza. And that, before in so many words admonishing Israelis to dump the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by demanding early elections.

The question now is whether the increasingly harsh rhetoric out of Washington translates into action in Israel.

The coming days will present Mr. Biden with the opportunity to make good on his words, some officials and Middle East policy analysts say. Such action could include a reduction or slow-walking of offensive military assistance.

But some experts still don’t see President Biden acting on his rhetoric, “red lines” or no.

“Three levers”

“The White House has three levers it could pull,” says Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert who has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. They are reducing or slowing military assistance, dropping use of the United Nations Security Council veto on resolutions condemning Israel over the war, and supporting an unlimited cease-fire.

“But you have to ask yourself, how does doing any of this, resorting to that kind of pressure, advance Biden’s two main goals,” he adds, “which are ... deescalating the situation in Gaza, and changing the pictures coming out of there?”

If anything, Mr. Miller says he’s seeing the same pattern – of ratcheting up criticism but stopping short of acting on it – that has played out since shortly after the war was launched with Hamas’ attack Oct. 7.

“Most recently we had the ‘red line’, but you saw what’s happened to it, it’s disappeared,” says Mr. Miller, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. The evidence? Last week, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, followed up on the president’s use of the term by saying there is no red line.

Others point out that even when Mr. Biden presented Israel with his red line, he immediately countered it with something more typical of the president, who calls himself a Zionist. In a March 9 interview with MSNBC, he said any assault on Rafah before evacuating more than 1 million war refugees “is a red line, but I’m never going to leave Israel.”

For some, the comment was more “president thinks out loud” than “president foretells policy.”

“I suspect a lot of the ‘red line’ language is the migration of internal discussions to public utterances,” says Jon Alterman, who served on the State Department policy planning staff under President George W. Bush and is now director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Middle East program. “It’s important to have red lines in mind,” he adds, “but when you state them publicly, you need to enforce them publicly.”

Netanyahu reacts

White House officials say the broad issue of what Mr. Miller calls “levers” for pressuring Israel has been discussed – in particular what it would mean to reduce or slow the delivery of offensive weaponry. But they say no decisions have been taken.

A recent focus of White House discussions has been what to do if Mr. Netanyahu flouts U.S. warnings and launches a Rafah offensive with inadequate humanitarian preparation.

For his part, Mr. Netanyahu responded to mounting U.S. opposition to the war at a Cabinet meeting Sunday, saying “we will withstand any pressure” to allow “fighting to the end – to total victory.”

That will include an imminent operation against Hamas in Rafah, he said, but only after “the essential stage” of civilian evacuation from “combat zones.”

He also took an indirect swipe at Senator Schumer’s comments, saying growing calls from the “international community” for early elections are coming from those “who are trying to stop the war now, before all of its goals have been achieved.”

Over recent weeks, as relations between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Biden have soured, the president has labored to draw a distinction between Israel and its current political leader. As part of that, he has repeatedly underscored that his support for Israel is unwavering.

For example, he has made a point of ruling out any limits on defensive armaments deliveries. “The defense of Israel is still critical,” he said in the MSNBC interview, “so there’s no red line [with which] I’m going to cut off all weapons so they don’t have the Iron Dome [missile defense system] to protect them.”

Some experts say Mr. Biden could make a show of slowing the delivery of offensive arms – particularly for the vocal slice of the U.S. public opposed to the war – without it actually having much of an impact on Israel’s ability to fight.

“The United States is transferring weapons to Israel at a remarkably fast pace,” says Mr. Alterman, citing “innovations in supply” developed as a result of the war in Ukraine. “I could certainly imagine things slowing down amidst growing Israel-U.S. tensions.”

A deadline for Israel

Some point out that even if there is no credible “red line,” there is an approaching deadline that could result in a conditioning of military aid.

According to a requirement stipulated in the national security memorandum Mr. Biden signed last month, Israel has until March 25 to provide written assurances that it abides by international law while using U.S.-provided weapons. Moreover, Israel must affirm that it will facilitate and not obstruct the delivery of aid into Gaza.

In a similar vein, over recent weeks, a group of Democratic senators led by Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen has been pressing President Biden to invoke the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act, a 1961 law that bars providing assistance to any country that prohibits or restricts the delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.

The law was only used once, when President Bill Clinton in 1996 restricted aid to Turkey over its economic sanctions on Armenia. But even in that case, Mr. Clinton used the law’s presidential waiver to keep aid to Turkey flowing, citing U.S. national security interests.

There are some signs that despite the tough talk, Israel is taking note of U.S. and international demands for more humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Last week a spokesperson for the Israeli military told foreign journalists that Israel’s aim going forward would be “to flood [Gaza] with humanitarian aid” at various entry points.

Mr. Netanyahu said after speaking with the president Monday that they discussed Israel’s war aims in Gaza and the provision to Palestinians in Gaza “the necessary humanitarian aid that helps achieve these goals.”

There are few signs however that Mr. Schumer’s comments are being similarly taken to heart. Opinion polls consistently show a strong majority of Israelis oppose Mr. Netanyahu and would vote for a new leader, but the senator’s call for early elections appeared to strike many Israelis, including some political leaders, as unwanted meddling.

Benny Gantz, a center-right member of Israel’s emergency war Cabinet and a critic of Mr. Netanyahu who recently visited Washington, was quick to admonish Mr. Schumer on social media Thursday, saying he had “erred in his remark” and that any “external intervention is not correct and not welcome.”

But with U.S.-Israel relations so historically tight and emotional, politics are never fully out of the picture.

Indeed, while much ado has been made of how Mr. Biden in an election year is feeling pressure from the Democratic Party’s progressive wing over Israel’s war in Gaza, some experts say it might actually be pressures from the right that discourage Mr. Biden from taking concrete steps.

“The growing disaffection among progressives is not the only problem Biden faces in this,” says Mr. Miller. “Rest assured that as soon as he does anything to actually restrain Israel, the ‘Israel-can-do-no-wrong’ Republicans will be ready to pounce.”