The US president could not have been clearer.
Asked whether he was comfortable with reports Israel was about to launch a ground invasion into Lebanon, he said: “No. I’m comfortable with them stopping. We should have a ceasefire now.”
Israel’s response? To launch an invasion anyway.
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It was a remarkable moment in US-Israel relations. Israel depends on American patronage. Without American support, it would simply be unable to defend itself.
And yet Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government is thumbing its nose at its closest ally and carrying on regardless.
Most of all, Americans fear a wider war sucking in most of the region. Those fears seem to be coming to pass after Iran’s latest attack on Israel.
It has been an extraordinary week for the Israeli-American alliance.
Last week, the Israeli prime minister misled the Americans for all the world to see.
On the eve of his address to the UN, he agreed to the idea of a ceasefire. US officials then said publicly they were confident a truce would be implemented “in the coming hours”.
The next day, as he actually landed on American soil in New York, he rejected the idea and then authorised the biggest escalation of this war – the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
He has made the Biden administration look foolish and impotent.
Netanyahu warned at the UN that there was ‘no place’ in Iran that the long arm of Israel couldn’t reach
Joe Biden had a very different message at the UN last week. Pic: Reuters
Unable to stop the invasion of Lebanon, Joe Biden’s diplomats are trying to restrain Israel instead.
Well-sourced reports say the US has been urging Israel to make its invasion of Lebanon limited in scope.
That may be a forlorn hope. Israel has moved four more brigades to the north. It clearly sees this as an opportunity to do maximum damage to Hezbollah.
Even if its plans are for a limited operation, plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy, as a Prussian military strategist famously once observed.
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Why is Israel able to get away with this?
Because Benjamin Netanyahu has Joe Biden exactly where he wants him. The American president is snookered.
Just over a month away from the US election, he cannot possibly fall out with the Israeli prime minister while Israel is under attack. That would be politically disastrous.
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The US must also stand fast with Israel for pressing strategic reasons.
The US is deeply worried Iran might wade into this war. Those fears now seem well founded. Any distance between America and Israel might encourage Iran to do its worst.
Make no mistake, the US welcomes the death of Hassan Nasrallah and the degrading of Hezbollah. It has the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands.
And the US government is absolutely committed to Israel’s right to self-defence.
But the Biden administration wants this to end – and end now – with a ceasefire.
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For Joe Biden and his vice president, the spectacle of the Middle East descending into fiery chaos is an electoral nightmare.
Kamala Harris’s opponents have long fostered the impression their combined term in office has been a disaster overseas.
American officials are deeply concerned the Israelis do not have an endgame.
They fear mission creep, and the risk of Israel being drawn into a quagmire in Lebanon.
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President Biden has been a steadfast supporter and friend of Israel in a half-century of public office.
He has sent Israel billions of dollars of aid since 7 October and the Hamas attacks. He has paid a political price for that support of Israel, branded “Genocide Joe” by his opponents.
One very senior diplomat from the region who knows both the Israelis and Americans very well put it like this – after all he has done for Israel, the least the US president could have been given in return in his last few weeks in office was a ceasefire in the Middle East.
Instead, he says the Israelis have given Joe Biden “a kick in the teeth”.
