Biden Must Be Bold to End Israel's War on Gaza

Peace and security require the courage and strength to champion our values

President Joe Biden’s rhetoric is growing stronger on Israel’s war on Gaza. But his actions are not. That is one reason so many are raising their voices to demand that the President apply to Israel the same standards we demand of other nations. Now these cries to end the slaughter are being accompanied by concrete action plans.

Biden said last week that Israel’s response to the horrific October 7 massacre was justified but “over the top.” The Washington Post reported that he is moving closer to a break with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how his far-right government is waging the war.

Biden also issued an executive order last week to make future aid to any nation, including Israel, contingent on “credible and reliable” written assurances that the aid was being used “in a manner consistent with all applicable international and domestic law and policy, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law,”

The order was a slightly weaker version of an amendment drafted by Senators Chris Van Hollen and Richard Durbin (the Senate Whip) and supported by 19 Senate Democrats, total. It requires that the Congress be assured in writing within 90 days of a nation receiving aid that it is in compliance with these laws. (The original amendment required the notification within 30 days.)

But the White House indicated on February 13 that is would not punish Israel if it went ahead with an assault on the over-crowded city of Rafah in southern Gaza, despite the President’s warnings not to do so. Some 1.7 million Palestinians have been forced to seek shelter there after Israel ordered their forced relocation from northern Gaza, promising them safe haven. On February 12, Israel attacks killed over 100 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while freeing 2 Israeli hostages.

Sen. Van Hollen took to the floor of the Senate on February 12 to demand stronger action. “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food,” Van Hollen said in his remarks. “In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true. That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals…President Biden must take action in response to what’s happening,” he said.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman - who has been superb in his analysis of the war and the dire risks for Israel and the region - penned another insightful column on February 13 warning of the damage Netanyahu was causing Israel:

If Israel destroys Hamas, and then decides to permanently occupy Gaza and the West Bank, rejecting any form of Palestinian statehood, Israel will become a global pariah for the next generation, and particularly in the Arab world. This will force Israel’s Arab allies to distance themselves from the Jewish state.

And if Israel remains in perpetual conflict with the Palestinians, the entire architecture of America’s Middle East strategy — particularly the crosscutting peace treaties that we’ve forged between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf nations — will come under pressure, complicating our ability to operate in the region and opening it to much more influence by Russia and China. Given the deaths of so many thousands of Gazan civilians, the U.S. is already having some difficulty using its military bases in Arab countries to counter Iran’s malign network of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiites militias in Iraq.

Similar to Friedman’s analysis, the pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-diplomacy organization J Street issued a detailed policy memorandum on February 13: “US Recognition of Palestinian Statehood and a Bold Initiative for a Comprehensive Regional Peace.”

I attended the symposium on the Gaza War where J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami outlined the plan. J Street called for “a major shift in US policy.” The group “calls on the Biden Administration to outline a bold, comprehensive regional peace initiative aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian and broader Israeli-Arab conflicts.”

They detailed a plan centered on two key actions:

The first priority for diplomats, they said, is to negotiate an immediate stop to the fighting, the release of hostages and the delivery of humanitarian aid.

This must be accompanied by a longer-term vision for ending the underlying conflict, and a plan to get there.

For J Street and many others, that long-term plan is centered on the creation and recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Once seen as a fantasy, it is now seen as the only way to achieve an end to this war, to provide a diplomatic space for the acceptance of Israel in the region and to ensure true security for the over five million Palestinians in Israel’s occupied territories. This includes the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza who are the victims of the most deadly war fought in the 21st Century, where more than 1 out of every 100 Palestinian have been killed in just four months.

Below is a brief outline of the J Street plan. I strongly agree with its vision.

The Biden Administration should chart a clear path out of the horrors of the current war built on the following five steps.

Step One: Secure a stop in the fighting and the release of the hostages, surge humanitarian aid to Gaza, and lay out a comprehensive regional peace initiative...

Step Two: Ask for parallel, unilateral steps by Israelis and Palestinians. The President should ask each side to take a series of immediate, unilateral steps to demonstrate their interest in moving forward...

Step Three: Recognize Palestine and reissue the Arab Peace Initiative. In return for each side taking the unilateral steps outlined, the President should propose that: The United States and other partners – including European countries and other US allies that do not yet recognize Palestinian statehood – recognize the state of Palestine after the Palestinians have taken the unilateral steps asked of them...

Step Four: Negotiate on two tracks – Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution and Israel-Saudi normalization. The President should propose that following US recognition of Palestine and the reaffirmation of the Arab Peace Initiative, the United States would lead a new UN Security Council resolution laying out the parameters for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and confirming the path to admission for Palestine as a full member state…

Step Five: Take Congressional action necessary to enable both sets of agreement and support Palestinian admission to the UN as a member state.

There is much more detail in the full J Street proposal, including the steps each side must take and how the Palestinian Authority can be reformed and reconstituted. You can read a summary here, and the full memorandum here.

J Street is right. Warnings will not stop the violence. Incremental steps will not bring peace. We must go big or go home. If the United States retreats, if Biden does not lead now, the death and destruction will only grow, gravely imperiling the future of Palestine, the nation of Israel and the long-term security interests of the United States.