Biden facing tough questions over Israel’s strikes on civilians

CNN

By MJ Lee and Kevin Liptak, CNN

Washington (CNN) — President Joe Biden and his top national security officials are increasingly confronting questions about Israel’s commitment to minimizing civilian deaths and how scenes from Gaza could affect his domestic political standing.

Even some allies of the administration are worried that defending Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas terror attacks could become an untenable position for the White House. A massive blast that ripped through Jabalya refugee camp on Tuesday vividly captured the tightrope that the Biden administration is trying to walk: Maintaining in public that Israel is trying to contain Palestinian civilian casualties, even as bloody scenes of destruction pour out of Gaza, fueling public outrage and calls for a ceasefire.

The airstrike, which left catastrophic damage and killed a large number of people, has raised new questions about how effective Biden and his top officials have been in convincing their Israeli counterparts to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians. It is also intensifying concerns within the administration that the mounting civilian death toll could further erode international support for Israel, isolating the country at a moment of deep regional instability.

The wide-scale casualties in Gaza are weighing heavily on senior US officials, who are ratcheting up the pressure – both in private and in public – on the Israelis to contain civilian deaths. That pressure has originated from the president on down: Concerns about the safety of Palestinian civilians was front and center yet again when Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone on Sunday.

The rapidly mounting civilian death toll in Gaza has come as a surprise to some American officials, who recognize each instance of humanitarian carnage will be accompanied by more pressure to denounce Israel’s tactics, a line the White House has so far refused to cross.

“They’ve got a huge amount of anxiety about innocent lives being killed,” one source in close contact with Biden’s national security team said. “They obviously care deeply about that. … There is not a lack of empathy.”

But demonstrating that empathy has, so far, continued to be paired with a staunch defense of Israel and its right to defend itself. At Tuesday’s White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that Israeli forces may, at times, “fail to meet their own expectations about killing civilians.”

When pressed if the administration would go as far as to say that Israel is failing to minimize civilian casualties, Kirby insisted: “It’s obvious to us that they are trying to minimize [civilian casualties].”

To many, that statement did not appear to square with Israel’s operation on Tuesday in northern Gaza, which Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Richard Hecht said had successfully killed a senior Hamas commander. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Hecht said the target of the Israeli airstrike had been “hiding, as they do, behind civilians.”

When Blitzer reminded Hecht that there were many innocent civilians in that refugee camp, Hecht responded: “This is the tragedy of war, Wolf.” He added that Israeli officials had been urging civilians to “please move south.”

In some areas, the Biden administration has successfully used its leverage to pressure Israel to ease humanitarian suffering in Gaza. After Biden told Netanyahu on Sunday that aid to the strip must “immediately and significantly increase,” Israeli officials said the number of trucks crossing from Egypt would eventually increase to 100 per day.

And pressure from the United States led to the restoration of internet and cell phone connectivity in Gaza after it was severed at the start of Israel’s escalation.

Elsewhere, however, American entreaties have gone unanswered. Israel appears to have rejected, for now, the White House’s call for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting that would allow for aid to go in and hostages to come out.

And the intentional targeting of a refugee camp would appear, on its face, to spurn calls from the United States to tailor operations to protect civilian lives.

“Hamas is making life extremely difficult for Israel by taking civilians as human shields and by putting their rocket infrastructure and terrorist infrastructure among civilians,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday on CNN. “That creates an added burden for Israel, but it does not lessen Israel’s responsibility, under international humanitarian law, to distinguish between terrorists and civilians and to protect the lives of innocent people.”

Already, Biden had been walking a tightrope in his support for Israel following the Hamas terror attacks on October 7. The stance has caused rifts within his Democratic Party and put the United States at odds with many of its traditional allies in Europe.

Biden has resisted calls for a ceasefire, including at the United Nations, and insists Israel has a “responsibility” to defend its citizens from terrorism. Neither he nor anyone else in the administration has come close to criticizing how Israel is conducting its offensive.

Biden’s aides believe their messages of warning are more effectively delivered in private and insist there have been far tougher conversations behind the scenes than the public rhetoric might indicate.

That included advice from top American military officials to delay a ground invasion, in part to allow for more time to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. It also included attempts by US officials to interrogate Israel’s war plans, which appeared not fully developed to some.

Underpinning many of the conversations, however, were intensifying warnings about the ramifications of a mounting civilian death toll, which Biden and his team fear could lead to global backlash – including inside the United States.

The anger was apparent Tuesday at a hearing on Capitol Hill featuring Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. In scenes reminiscent of the Iraq war era, protesters interrupted their testimony one by one, loudly calling for a ceasefire and an end to the civilian deaths in Gaza.

There is recognition, one source familiar with the administration’s thinking said, that eventually “public opinion is going to change on Israel.”

That anticipation, the source added, puts additional pressure on US officials to continue reminding Americans of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that set off the Israel-Hamas war: “Hamas did a massive terrorist attack for the sole purpose of provoking Israel to do exactly what they’re doing now.”

In private, and increasingly in public, Biden has offered warnings to Israel about adhering to international humanitarian law by protecting civilian lives. In phone calls and during his in-person meeting with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv earlier this month, Biden has offered stark warnings about the potential that support for Israel could erode if the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens.

“My point to everyone is: Look, if you have an opportunity to alleviate the pain, you should do it. Period. And if you don’t, you’re going to lose credibility worldwide. And I think everyone understands that,” Biden told reporters as he returned home from his brief trip to Israel on October 18.

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