Israel Has Lost Washington

Washington centrists have seen enough. Calls grow for suspending military aid.

Richard Haas is a reliable weathervane for Washington’s national security consensus. Haas, the president emeritus of the Council of Foreign Relations and a former official in the George H.W. Bush White House, yesterday called for conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel and implementing trade sanctions. (Full disclosure: I am a CFR member)

While Biden’s statements of concern have increased in recent weeks, his “criticism looks increasingly empty,” Haas told Morning Joe April 3, “These attacks are continuing but so are U.S. arms sales to Israel.” As The Washington Post reported on Thursday, Biden approved massive shipments of thousands of bombs and advanced fighter-bombers to Israel on the very day that Israeli defense forces tracked, targeted and killed World Central Kitchen aid workers in a series of three drone attacks.

“Why does Israel need 2,000 lb. bombs to be used in high-density urban areas?” asks Haas. “Where is the White House reaction” to Israel appropriating 2,000 acres of Palestinian land in the West Bank,” he asks, further diminishing the basis for a two-state solution. “At some point the words become empty.” [See the interview here.]

Other guests on the show said Biden looks “weak and impotent.” That, too, has become the Washington consensus.

What’s new is that Haas, who has been ringing the alarm bell for weeks, now says that we have to move to condition arms and apply “trade sanctions — for example, against goods coming out of West Bank settlements….We can’t have a policy based on persuading Israel. We have to increasingly have an independent policy that reflects our interests and values.”

I was stunned when I heard that. But Israel’s attack on the seven WCK workers seems to have tipped Washington’s policy community - and perhaps the White House - into a new, more forceful approach to stopping the war.

On Wednesday, for example, Josh Rogin, a long-time supporter of Israel, also crossed over the line. After the October 7 attack the Washington Post columnist wrote, reflecting the then-Washington consensus, that the U.S. had to rush weapons to Israel and Ukraine. “It should support the partner countries that are victims of aggression, give them weapons they need to fight and build a diplomatic coalition around them.”

Israel’s horrific actions in Gaza have demolished that view. On April 3, after detailing the horrors of the Israeli-induced famine in Gaza and Israel’s frivolous obstruction of aid trucks, Rogin writes:

It is past time for the Biden administration to use real pressure — including the threat of withholding weapons — to persuade the Israeli government to do what the International Court of Justice demanded: Allow “unhindered provision” of food, hygiene and medical aid. The Biden team’s latest approval of thousands of more bombs for the Israeli army, before Israel complies, sends exactly the wrong signal.

Even Biden’s close friend, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, now supports conditions on military aid if Israel launches an attack on Rafah.

There are still far-right elements in Washington, like AIPAC and parts of the MAGA movement, that support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy of systematically starving 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, indiscriminate bombings, targeted killings of aid workers (almost 200 killed), journalists (95 killed) and medical workers (almost 700 killed), and turning Gaza into a wasteland. But the center has clearly shifted towards an immediate ceasefire.

That appears to now include the White House. First Lady Jill Biden has reportedly told her husband “Stop the war, now.” Biden is listening. On Thursday the President told Netanyahu, according to official statements, to take immediate steps to stop the attacks, protect civilians, open up humanitarian aid routes, and make a deal for an immediate ceasefire and exchange of hostages and prisoners.

“If we don’t see the changes we need to see, there will be changes in our policy,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after the call. “This week’s horrific attack on the World Central Kitchen was not the first such incident. It must be the last,” he said.

Blinken said that Biden in his phone call “made clear the need for Israel to announce specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers. He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by Israel’s immediate action on this steps.”

But Netanyahu is a master at slow-walking U.S. concerns. There are powerful corporate and bureaucratic interests determined to funnel billions of dollars of weapons to Israel. To demonstrate White House resolve, Biden should immediately pause weapons shipments, including the bombs and planes he approved just days ago. The President’s meaningful words will only matter if they are backed up by meaningful action.

The experts at the Center for International Policy have outlined six steps the U.S. can take now, including a full ceasefire, full enforcement of U.S. law to assure humanitarian aid delivery, and meaningful anti-occupation, anti-annexation steps. These steps could serve as a template for White House actions. Every day Biden delays, more innocent men, women and children die in Gaza.