By quietly stopping a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel last week, President Biden finally began to exert American influence to stop a full-scale invasion of Rafah, the last refuge in Gaza for about a million Palestinians displaced by Israeli destruction in other parts of the world. besieged territory.
It's the right move, even though Israel may have enough reserves from previous U.S. shipments to move forward.
Biden has tried to maintain a balance between supporting Israel in its effort to destroy Hamas following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that killed about 1,200 people and pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to limit civilian casualties. Until now, that pressure manifested itself only in the form of words. The death toll in Gaza is approaching 35,000 and much of the strip has been razed. Survivors face famine because Israel cut off access to corridors for the delivery of food and other humanitarian assistance. Biden's pressure managed to reopen some aid routes, but Israel has since limited their use. Israel launched airstrikes on Rafah and its troops and tanks entered the area on Tuesday. But so far there has been no large-scale bombing.
Congress, under pressure from Biden, approved $26 billion in aid to Israel last month, and administration officials said the president intends to deliver it in full.
But for now, the delay in delivering bombs supports US warnings against destroying Rafah.
There is precedent for withholding weapons to exert influence over Israel. In 1981, President Reagan delayed sending F-16 fighter jets in response to the Israeli bombing of Beirut and other military actions in Lebanon. The following year, in the midst of Lebanon's civil war, he stopped the firing of cluster artillery shells.
Reagan demanded that Prime Minister Menachem Begin end Israel's “holocaust” in Lebanon, and Biden (then a senator from Delaware) reportedly demanded that Begin block Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. But Begin later said that Biden was so adamant about defending Israel against the invasion that Begin had to dissuade him.
According to Begin, who died in 1992, Biden said he would use force to repel an invasion by Israel, even if it meant killing women or children.
“According to our values,” Begin recounted telling Biden, “it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war. …Sometimes there are also victims among the civilian population. But it is forbidden to aspire to this. “This is a criterion of human civilization, not to harm civilians.”
That criterion has been broken repeatedly since October 7, first by Hamas, but then, again and again, by Israel. An older, wiser Biden has tried to get Netanyahu to remember and respect that measure, but he has failed. Let us hope that the interruption of bomb shipments, however temporary and modest, serves as an effective reminder.
