Top foreign policy voice wants Biden to go over Bibi’s head

Last month, Richard Haass, the former longtime head of the Council on Foreign Relations, approached top officials in the Biden administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris, with an audacious plan for changing the politics around the Israel-Hamas war.

Haass believed that Joe Biden needed to separate himself from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose military campaign was hurting U.S. credibility abroad and the president’s popularity at home. And he proposed that Biden do so by going to Israel to deliver a speech — possibly to the Knesset, the nation’s parliament — where he’d lay out his vision directly to the Israeli people.

Haass, who previously worked in the State Departments for both Bush administrations, had come to the idea after growing increasingly dismayed by Israel’s defiance of Washington’s warnings that its bombardment of Gaza was causing widespread civilian casualties and threatened to destabilize the Middle East. And he first floated it from his perch as a panelist on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the cable news show Biden closely watches.

But by January, Haas was taking his advocacy a step further. Though he did not speak directly to Biden, he did pitch a Knesset-like speech to, among others, Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, according to two people familiar with the discussions but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

The senior officials reacted coolly to his proposal, according to those two people. A White House official confirmed Thursday that there had been no discussion of scheduling a trip to Israel.

"It's increasingly clear that the United States does not have a partner with this Israeli prime minister or government. We're paying a price for that: the president is paying a political price domestically and the U.S. is paying a reputational price in the region and the world,” Haass said in a statement to POLITICO. "A speech over the prime minister's head would clearly show what the U.S. believes and could lead to a real debate in Israel."

That Haass, a 72-year-old staid figure of the establishment, felt compelled to push Biden to undertake a high-stakes diplomatic endeavor underscores the frustration the foreign policy community has come to feel about the state of the war. And with Israel moving toward a military operation in the crowded Rafah area of the Gaza Strip that the Biden administration and other allies have warned against, that angst is unlikely to abate anytime soon.

While the administration, at least for now, has opted against a broad show of independence from Netanyahu’s government, it has taken a series of steps to split with the Israeli government and, in some cases, to aid Palestinians.

Over the past few weeks, Biden has started imposing sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. He has announced he is temporarily shielding certain Palestinians from deportation given the crisis in Gaza. He has issued a memorandum aimed at enhancing U.S. efforts to monitor whether countries receiving American military aid are violating human rights.

His administration also is ramping up pressure on Israel to allow in more humanitarian aid to Gaza, specifically flour. Top officials were recently dispatched to meet with Arab-American leaders in Michigan, a critical swing state with a large Arab-American population, where they expressed regret for much of the administration’s messaging on the crisis, which seemed to focus more on Israeli victims than Palestinian ones.

The most visible break, however, came last week when Biden deemed the Israeli military’s actions as “over the top.”

Still, the Biden administration's frustration with Netanyahu is far deeper than anyone has conveyed in public.

Biden had told senior aides and advisers in, at times, colorful language that he frequently finds Netanyahu obstinate and unreasonable, according to three people familiar with the private conversations.

And some Biden administration officials privately wonder if Netanyahu — whose popularity has sunk due to the Hamas attack — sees political opportunity in pressing ahead with the war. The prime minister may also see benefits, especially among far-right Israeli voters, in standing up to the United States, said Gerald Feierstein, a former senior State Department official focused on the Middle East.

The situation, Feierstein said, has clearly left Biden “increasingly fed up.”

“We all know Joe Biden has a temper,” he said. “He’s got his own concerns about his presidential election in a few months. I think that in fact he is increasingly out of patience with Netanyahu, and it is beginning to show.”

White House aides note that, even in the early days of the war, Biden pushed Israel to allow humanitarian aid to Gaza and warned Netanyahu not to make the same mistakes the United States did after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

“Since the horrific attacks of October 7th, President Biden has steadfastly supported Israel’s right to defend itself by rooting out Hamas, which continues to pose an existential threat to the Israeli people, while also urging Israel to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties,” said Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the National Security Council. “He has also directed his team from the beginning of the conflict to work to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians who are caught up in this crisis and are also victims of Hamas.”

Frictions could soon come to a boil as Israel plans to stage a ground offensive in the Rafah area of the Gaza strip. The Biden team sees the operation as “a disaster best avoided,” a U.S. official familiar with the situation said.

Biden has warned Netanyahu not to proceed with the offensive without a serious plan to protect civilians, a message he reiterated in a call with the Israeli leader Thursday. But Netanyahu has given no indication that he is reconsidering the operation. Should he ignore the warnings, Biden could look unusually impotent on the world stage.

It would present a major puncture to the U.S.-Israel relationship. But even then U.S. officials are skeptical that Israel would respond to a major rebuke from Washington. Israeli popular opinion is broadly supportive of the war effort, and the country has the weaponry to continue its campaign for a significant amount of time even if the U.S. walks away from it. That, in turn, has put the White House in a political bind back home.

Many progressive Democrats have grown deeply unhappy over the years with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the Israel-Hamas war has severely undercut Biden’s standing among that section of his party. Most Democrats now disapprove of Biden's handling of the war, including nearly three quarters of Democratic voters ages 18 to 44, according to a recent AP-NORC poll.

“There’s too much of a difference between what they say they’re doing privately and what they are doing publicly,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said of the White House's approach. She has counseled senior Biden aides to more explicitly break with Netanyahu.

Adam Cancryn contributed reporting.