Conditioning U.S. Aid to Israel Isn’t Unprecedented

To say that the Biden administration is frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be a significant understatement.

The hardline prime minister heading up an even more hardline ultranationalist government has humiliated President Joe Biden continuously, whether it’s over Israeli military strategy in Gaza, how Gaza will be administered after the war against Hamas is over, or how much aid should be sent into the enclave. The fact that the U.S. military had to resort to dropping food parcels into Gaza was perhaps the biggest insult of them all—the Biden administration wouldn’t be going to such drastic measures if its advice was getting through to the Israeli government.

Biden and his senior advisers understand what’s happening around them. Israel’s defiance isn’t great optics, so they’ve chosen to speak out more sternly than before. On March 3, Vice President Kamala Harris pressed for an “immediate ceasefire” of at least six weeks in order to get the remaining Israeli hostages out of Gaza and greater humanitarian aid in. The situation inside Gaza, she said, was simply deplorable. Biden followed up two days later, telling the White House Press Corps there were “no excuses” to getting additional aid to where it needed to go. While none of this may concern Netanyahu, it’s apparently worrying Benny Gantz, a key member off his war cabinet, who left his meetings in Washington surprised about the depth of U.S. criticism.

The charged words, however, aren’t having an impact. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are preparing for an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than half of the enclave’s population now resides, despite U.S. entreaties to the Israelis about having a viable plan to get civilians out of the area before an operation starts. According to the Pentagon‘s chief spokesperson, the U.S. still hasn’t seen a plan. Netanyahu is also resisting more land corridors into Gaza. The civilian casualties continue to pile up by the day, with the death toll now creeping close to 31,000 since the war started.

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