Israel using US election to take  free hand against Gaza, Lebanon

The Knesset’s vote this week to ban  the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA), the principal humanitarian aid group in the Palestinian territories, is the latest Israeli enormity in its year-long war in Gaza.

This move, which will impact two million civilians under siege in Gaza, underscores a central point: the Israeli government’s expectation that the Biden administration will acquiesce in whatever Tel Aviv wants to do in this war — even starvation tactics — and now also in Lebanon.

The State Department said that if the Knesset did not reverse its vote there “could be consequences under U.S. law.” But judging from U.S. behavior, any consequences will be limited to words, not limits on American military or political support.

The timing of this ban on UNWRA, fostered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his most extreme cabinet members, was not happenstance. He knows he has “free play” in anything he wants to do, at least until the elections on Tuesday. But he can’t be sure that afterwards, during his lame-duck tenure, President Joe Biden won’t find the necessary gumption to tell Israel that “enough is enough.” Given Biden’s career-long support for Israel’s behavior, that is most unlikely to happen, but Netanyahu has been taking no chances.

At the same time, the Biden administration is looking at polling numbers regarding the election in swing states, notably Michigan and Wisconsin. These states are home to large Muslim-American constituencies. During last February’s Democratic presidential primary in Michigan, because of President Biden’s unstinting support for Israel in Gaza, many tens of thousands of these voters either stayed home or cast “uncommitted” ballots against him. It is unknowable whether that electoral behavior will be repeated on November 5, and whether it could tip the vote in one or two swing states, thus potentially denying Kamala Harris the presidency. Recent polling suggests that Trump is gaining support from Arab-American voters in the days before the election.

At the same time, the Democratic party, and presumably their voters, too, are split on Israel’s case. Again, how the numbers will add up is unknowable.

The Biden-Harris administration is clearly focused on keeping this issue from sinking their chances to keep the White House. Secretary of State Antony Blinken just completed his 11th visit to the region since October 7th. While there, his talks included efforts to renew negotiations to at least pause military operations in Gaza and gain release of some of the Hamas-held hostages. On the face of it, it’s a fool’s errand; thus likely designed to reassure those voters — especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, whose votes in the election might be swayed by developments in the Levant — that Biden is still laboring to stop the war.

Meanwhile, U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein and CIA Director Bill Burns were in Israel and Egypt, respectively, on Thursday to promote last ditch efforts for ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. These too had little hope of success.

Another event likely timed with our election in mind was Netanyahu’s decision to attack Iran last week for its missile strikes on Israel. Indeed, Biden had publicly given him a green light. 

But unlike in Gaza and now Lebanon, the Biden administration had something more visceral to fear. First, Israel might have attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities and thus virtually guaranteed that, at some point, Tehran would find a way to get the bomb. Second, more importantly, Israel might have attacked Iranian oil fields, leading Iran to spasmodically respond by closing the vital Strait of Hormuz to all regional states’ oil and gas exports.

The result would have had a major, perhaps catastrophic, impact on the global oil trade. Even the risk that Iran would take this step would have caused panic in oil markets just a week or so before Americans go to the polls.

Israel did agree to U.S. demands on limiting targets in Iran to military sites — it was self-deterred by understanding that even an otherwise complaisant Biden administration could not tolerate such a bold action. Of course, Israeli caution also comported with its own self-interest in not getting at loggerheads with the region’s other petrochemical-producing nations, including all those with Abrahamic Accords with Israel.

Such limits on attacks have not led Israel to stop attacking Gaza and Lebanon, however, with major civilian casualties.

On October 13, the U.S. did warn Israel that failure to increase the flow of aid to Gaza, “may have implications for U.S. policy under NSM-20 [related to US arms supplies in conflict situations] and relevant US law.” But the notional deadline only expires on November 12, and it’s not clear that the veiled warning about cuts in military support is enough to force Netanyahu even to permit humanitarian aid.

If Israel does accede to this US request on aid, however, Washington will still almost surely continue its limitless support for Israel’s military actions, other than against Iran. The U.S. reputation for intelligent exercise of power and commitment to humanitarian principles would thus continue taking a hard knock.

President Biden, in consultation with the new president-elect, must finally use America’s levers of power to act and not just talk to promote an end to fighting which, among other things, is the only route to return of hostages and, in the future, to forging stability and peace in the region. At heart, American leadership must be restored.