Two weeks from now, Joe Biden will no longer be US president and Antony Blinken will not be serving as secretary of state. Blinken’s comments now are too little, too late.
In a New York Times interview published this past weekend, the secretary says that the absence of world pressure on Hamas to surrender and release the hostages held in Gaza since the October 7 massacre has been “astounding,” adding: “Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender – I don’t know what the answer is to that.”
Blinken goes further: “Israel, on various occasions, has offered safe passage to Hamas’s leadership and fighters out of Gaza,” and asks, “Where is the world?”
These are blunt comments from the top US diplomat, but he did not seem to find too many, if any, occasions to speak out in such a sharp manner, at least publicly, at an earlier stage when it might have made a difference. In a series of articles in The Jerusalem Post since the beginning of this war, a Biden aide has been sharing with me the dynamic of the cooperation between Washington and Jerusalem beyond the news headlines.
In the earlier days, Blinken spoke of the playbook at the White House to distinguish between what they viewed as the just cause of Israel’s battle to defeat Hamas and the problem at its helm, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That strategy was manifested by behind-the-scenes close contact between the US and Israel on how to conduct the war, which included times of agreement and times of disagreement, but when it came time to hold high-level public talks in the US capital, the Biden administration preferred to invite then-defense minister Yoav Gallant and then-war cabinet minister Benny Gantz.
Before addressing the world’s silence, it must be pointed out that the US administration’s tightrope walk in handling Israel was largely due to domestic politics. Until the latter part of July, Biden was running for reelection. He was not only worried about the voters from his Democratic Party,but also about his vice president, Kamala Harris.
“She was the only top official in the president’s inner circle who was not totally on board when it came to the close cooperation with Israel to oust Hamas,” according to a White House source.
Trying to play both sides
US officials openly described it as a “good cop, bad cop” arrangement. The president felt close to Israel in general, and at this horrific time, in particular, and was trying to stand at the Jewish state’s side, even as Harris – while often condemning Hamas and calling for the release of the hostages – placed greater emphasis on the numbers of civilians, including young children, who were getting killed in Gaza and the need for a ceasefire.
A Biden aide put in frankly: “We warned the Israelis about civilian casualties, but we did that through military cooperation, while the vice president spoke out the way she did, supporting the Palestinians in Gaza but without interfering in what we were doing with the Israelis.”
THEN, HARRIS became a presidential candidate. As that was happening, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress, invited to do so by the speaker of the House of Representatives, a member of the Republican Party. Netanyahu met with Biden, with smiles for the camera at the photo-op; Netanyahu then met with Harris. In the words of a Biden aide watching on television: “Their handshake was so cold, they could have gotten frostbite.”
This love-hate dynamic strengthened the feeling on the part of many Israel supporters that a president from the Democratic Party feels too much pushback from within the party if the backing for Israel is perceived as too broad and that the game Biden was forced to play because of the opposing forces with which he was confronted was detrimental to Israel.
After the vice president had already become the Democratic presidential candidate, she revisited the old theme. In October, marking a year since the Hamas atrocities, Harris was asked on the CBS program 60 Minutes about Netanyahu as a close US ally. Her reply: “I think, with all due respect, the better question is, do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people. And the answer to that question is yes.”
Right after the massacres, in October 2023, the Biden administration approached European countries and other US allies, calling for a unified front to “turn the screw on Hamas and Qatar,” in the words of a White House aide, who insists that had the challenge been accepted, the hostages would all be home, Hamas would be out of Gaza, the war would be over, and talks would be underway to improve the future of Gaza and its civilians.
Instead, various European countries and the EU leadership dismissed the US initiative as not being serious. They too, singled out the Israeli prime minister, with some saying that they did not wish to get involved in “Netanyahu’s war.” Did they not believe that this was a just war for Israel to be fighting?
SO NOW, as he is about to walk out the door of the State Department, Blinken asks: “Where is the world?”
Make no mistake, Israeli officials in the military, diplomatic and political echelons are grateful to the Biden administration for the assistance and friendship. On the other hand, as one senior Israeli diplomat in Europe put it: “It is criminal that there are world leaders, friends, who have the gall to condemn us after they didn’t want to get involved to help the situation right away, in October 2023.”
Yet, the Biden administration was considered weak on the international stage, in part due to its own political maneuvering. It contributed to the reality in which the State of Israel has been forced to negotiate with terrorists for the release of hostages. There could have been a unified call, a demand, and action – if necessary – by the international community to force Hamas to unconditionally release the hostages and allow the Gazan people to live in peace.
The writer is the op-ed editor of The Jerusalem Post.