The Hug Bibi Strategy
It is playing into unpopular politics, but a necessary one geopolitically
It was a hug seen around the world. US President Joe Biden greeted Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu with a hug. That moment, and the speeches that followed in Tel Aviv and in Washington DC, were the defining moments of Biden’s initial support for Israel, a close ally relatively strained in recent years.
To observers and pundits like Jonathan V. Last, it is the finest hour of Biden’s foreign policy.
We should just say it out loud: President Biden’s reaction to the 10/7 attack has been one of the best pieces of foreign policy crisis management by an American president in a generation.
In one week Biden has:
Given Israel moral, rhetorical, and concrete support.
Rallied Europe to Israel’s cause.
Pulled the main body of the Democratic party even further away from its radical, anti-Israel fringe.
And pushed Israel to be more attentive to humanitarian concerns in its campaign against Hamas.
Here’s how he did it:
Leading up to 10/7, Biden has had a rocky relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
Nonetheless, within hours of the attacks, Biden was on the phone with Netanyahu pledging American support.
Biden orchestrated a joint statement of support for Israel from the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, and Germany.
He moved two American carrier groups to the region to deter Iran and Hezbollah from carrying out follow-on attacks.
He gave an extraordinary speech—an address that will be remembered as a high point in U.S.-Israeli relations.
His administration specifically rebuked the three elected Democrats who are on the radical, anti-Israel fringe of the party.
At the same time, Biden has worked to pressure Israel to abandon certain tactics in its response to Hamas. Israel reversed course on shutting off the water to Gaza because of Biden’s intervention.
Biden visited Israel yesterday and once again stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Israelis—but also finessed them into taking humanitarian concerns in Gaza more seriously, including allowing an aid corridor to the strip.
I mean this literally: I cannot imagine how an American president could have handled this moment better.
I like to troll my best friend about how Biden is Reagan’s third term, but in this specific instance, Biden has been even better than Reagan, because he’s balanced hawkish clarity with hard-headed humanitarianism.
But most Americans will not have any praise like JVL did in the excerpt above, or even have a perception shift when it comes to Biden’s performance. Most of them do not care much about foreign policy, and follow events much more loosely than the average Nerd Writes The World reader. In addition, as we have seen in some other Western left-leaning leaders (like the UK Labour Party’s Keir Starmer), there is a loss in trust and support among the Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian communities in the country. NBC News recently published an interesting article on how Muslim Americans feel betrayed by Biden’s actions with Israel.
As President Joe Biden declared unwavering support for Israel in the days after Hamas’ terror attack in Israel, Ahmad Ramadan, a former Biden adviser now leading coalition efforts for the Michigan Democratic Party, called the state party chair to raise the alarm about what he was hearing.
Michigan has one of the largest Muslim and Arab American populations in the country, and they say their support for Biden was instrumental to putting him over the top in the critical swing state in 2020. But now, Ramadan and other Democratic leaders in the state were hearing nothing but frustration with Biden — and threats to not vote for him again.
In a series of more than a dozen roundtable discussions with Muslim community leaders in the two weeks since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, Ramadan said the main takeaway is that “people are very disappointed.” They say they “will not forget what President Biden did and why he lied to them,” he added.
“President Biden won with historic numbers in 2020. And I was proud to represent that, but the last two weeks have really shifted things,” Ramadan said. “I’ve also been getting calls from people saying, ‘I have blood on my hands because I got people out to support him during that campaign.'”
While Muslim Americans remain a small minority of the U.S. population, their numbers are growing rapidly, and both parties are increasingly vying for their support. Democrats have mostly succeeded so far, as former President Donald Trump and other Republicans turned them off with policies like a travel ban that affected predominantly Muslim countries (something Trump is promising to implement again if he is re-elected).
Now, though, Muslim leaders are warning that Democrats risk losing their support, too, if Biden and the party do not do more to combat Islamophobia and address the pain many are feeling about the war in Gaza.
“Joe Biden has single-handedly alienated almost every Arab-American and Muslim American voter in Michigan,” said state Rep. Alabas Farhat, a Democrat whose district includes Dearborn, which is home to one of the largest Muslim and Arab American communities in the country.
Farhat said he has constituents and neighbors who have family members trapped in Gaza — including some who are American citizens — and they feel completely abandoned by the U.S. government for not doing more to help get them out, get aid in and pressure Israel for a cease-fire.
“The Biden administration and Democrats as a whole are going to have to do a lot of work to rebuild some level of trust with my community,” he said. “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
In rolling conversations in Michigan and beyond over the past two weeks, Muslim elected officials, activists and community leaders have coalesced around a plan to mobilize their constituents to vote next year — but also to encourage them to leave the top of the ticket blank in protest, according to multiple people involved in the discussions.
“That’s the plan right now,” Farhat said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of people that remember when you won Michigan years ago by a razor-thin margin, when you won Georgia with a razor-thin margin, when you won Arizona by a razor-thin margin — do not be surprised if there are consequences for your actions.”
Others have heard from constituents who are planning to vote Republican because they feel that at least Republicans were honest with them about their carte-blanche support for Israel, while they feel duped and used by Democrats.
Now, it is too early to say how Muslim Americans’ voting habits might change in the 2024 election. If we want to play the horse race game, there is a chance the Democrats might lose support from the Muslim American base. However, a shift to Republicans comes with risks of their own, especially when it comes to Trump and the xenophobic instincts he plans to implement.
It is fair to say that nobody likes Benjamin Netanyahu, the man Joe Biden hugged last Wednesday. I certainly don’t, Western supporters of Israel don’t, and the Israeli people certainly don’t. Haaretz, the longest-publishing newspaper in Israel, published an article on October 9 (two days into the conflict’s escalation) calling for Netanyahu to step down immediately.
And remember, Netanyahu was brought back to power in last year’s election thanks to a far-right coalition. When the coalition came into power at the beginning of this year, the New Yorker interviewed Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and activist who co-founded the human rights organization Al-Haq.
What are your concerns specifically about relations with the Palestinians under this new government?
I think the new government is going to more strongly affect—and have a deleterious effect on—Israel than it will the West Bank and the Palestinians. But, first of all, let’s not speak about the Palestinians in general, because there are Palestinians in Gaza, there are Palestinians in Israel, and there are Palestinians in the West Bank. The effect on each is different. To start with Gaza, the worst thing is that this government may make war—or is very likely to make a war. And that of course will affect Gaza.
For Palestinians in Israel, the effect will be strong because they are going to be subject to more racist attitudes. The government is already planning to have more Jewish settlers and Israeli Jews in the Galilee, and fewer Palestinians. Palestinians can also be affected by the budgetary allocations of their local councils. They can be affected by the allocations for placements in jobs, in medical schools, and so on. The discrimination against Palestinians in Israel is very likely to happen, and already there is fear that the situation will be worse than it is now.
As to the West Bank, the situation is, I think, less structural and more a question of degree, because we have had already, since 1979, changes in the structures of the government of the area, whereby the settlers have been separated from the Palestinians and placed under a different regime and annexed to Israel, effectively. And so all the discrimination affects the Palestinians and not the Israeli settlers.
These structures are already there, and this new government is not going to create new ones but will use its powers of civil administration to increase the difficulties for the Palestinians. Under the existing rules, planning in Area C, which is about sixty per cent of the West Bank, is under the Israeli civilian administration. Smotrich will take power over this administration, and will apply stricter rules as to what is allowed and what is not allowed and how many more settlements and outposts will be legalized, and so on. And, of course, allocation of funds is in his hands, and so he would give more funds to build more settlements.
There is also the fear that Palestinians will be thrown out of the West Bank and Gaza. Members of the right-wing coalition have been very outspoken about the need to throw “extremist” Palestinians out of the land. They will use any opportunity to do that. One of the biggest opportunities would be war, of course, but short of a war they can make changes in the regulations whereby Palestinians who are unwanted can be thrown out to Jordan or from the West Bank to Gaza.
The coalition has overseen expansions in Israeli settlements in Palestine (both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) and has enabled more actions to be taken by Israeli settlers against Palestinians as mentioned in the excerpt below from The Guardian.
In the first eight months of 2023, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded a daily average of three incidents of settler attacks a day on Palestinians in the West Bank, killing and injuring Palestinians, damaging their property, and preventing them from moving to reach their lands, workplaces, families and friends.
However, what we are experiencing now is a rapid escalation of this violence. Between 1 January and 19 September 2023, Israeli settlers and forces killed 189 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and injured 8,192. Since 7 October alone, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed 64 Palestinians, injured 1,300, and carried out 77 attacks on healthcare facilities.
And remember the massive protests over the judicial overhaul? There are parts of it that are harmful to Palestinians in a legislative change to protect Netanyahu’s own power. Vox’s article during the height of the protests in April provides more detail and context on the matter.
Largely absent from the protests’ calls has been attention toward the already abysmal situation for Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank. But Netanyahu’s current government is unprecedented in this regard, too: Israeli settlers who advocate for Jewish supremacist policies now hold powerful ministerial roles and are making moves to annex the occupied West Bank. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently called for the eradication of a Palestinian village. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is a longtime inciter of violence against Palestinians.
The anti-government protests also come at a time of intensive violence between Israelis and Palestinians that could spiral to a new dangerous phase with these extremist Israeli ministers in top posts. Israeli authorities have been conducting deadly raids on West Bank cities and villages, including a military raid that killed six Palestinians earlier this month. It’s part of a crescendo of Israeli clampdown, as grassroots Palestinian groups and individuals turn to violent resistance and terrorism in response to the daily violence of the Israeli occupation.
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The parallel legal systems, which Palestinian and Israeli experts call apartheid, have created the conditions whereby it’s easier for a radical right-wing government to chip away at checks and balances. Indeed, researcher Yousef Munayyer notes, “The government’s assault on the judiciary is driven by the same urge as the state’s founders: to protect their power to privilege Jews over Palestinians.”
The slippery slope poses a threat to the very tenets of Israeli democracy. The designation of seven Palestinian NGOs that focus on human rights as “terrorist groups” in 2021 may create conditions for the further crackdown on Israeli civil society. If a Palestinian citizen of Israel’s citizenship can be revoked, as a new law enshrines, it could lead to laws that institute the same for Jewish citizens of Israel.
One of the most frightening outcomes could be what Shaul calls “the nuclear option,” whereby Palestinian political parties could be barred from participating in Israeli elections. The Central Elections Committee, for example, has disqualified parties like Balad from participating in Knesset elections, only to then have the Supreme Court override this. But what if there was no override? Balad would not be able to run, and other Palestinian parties in Israel would likely be prohibited, too, or choose not to participate. “Then you basically have elections where Palestinian citizens of Israel cannot run or boycott,” Shaul told me. “Game over, so to speak.”
Yet only some protesters have apparently made this connection. As journalist Peter Beinart wrote recently in the New York Times, “a movement premised on ethnocracy cannot successfully defend the rule of law.”
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Even if Israel’s domestic crisis subsides, the violence of the Israeli occupation continues, and the resistance of Palestinians has led CIA Director Bill Burns to warn of a third intifada or uprising. A February statement put out by Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the United States, Jordan, and Egypt sought to calm tensions, but that very day saw a Palestinian gunman shooting two brothers in the West Bank and a settler rampage against the Palestinian village of Huwara. The diplomatic effort showed how wide the gap is between leadership of these countries and the ever-worsening reality on the ground.
We can spend so much more time discussing the history and the tensions that have sparred such entrenched conflict between Israel and Palestine, but let’s not get sidetracked.
Benjamin Netanyahu is not a likable person, particularly at this moment. He was promised to be Mr. Security, but the only thing he has secured is his own power and job.
And to be fair to Biden, he was critical of Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms. Remember, his meeting with Netanyahu in September marked the end of the longest gap an Israeli PM and a US President has not met each other in decades. But now, it seems like Bibi and Biden are back together again.
It is important to understand the predicate before diving into Biden’s “hug Bibi” strategy: Israel is at war.
I have alluded before in different articles to the reference many make between 9/11 in the US and 10/7 in Israel. Idealistically, there should be a ceasefire, I hope that can happen too (Just to be clear: I WANT PEACE! IF A CEASEFIRE IS THE BEST WAY TO GO, I WILL SUPPORT IT 100%!). But unfortunately, that is simply not the case as things stand geopolitically.
From a realist perspective, Israel has just suffered its worst encroachment to its sovereignty and security in its history. It wants, and will, retaliate as a state actor. Even if you indulge in the possibility of a ceasefire, how far will that go? We have seen the Oslo Accords and other similar peace and diplomatic treaties get signed and then discarded, will the ceasefire demands of Israel be fully met by the Palestinian government and Hamas in the Gaza Strip? Of course not.
If that even happens, which is impossible because of the radicals and zealots of both sides for starters, we will find ourselves in a what-if scenario. A what-if the Bush administration after 9/11 acted not in military retaliation but seeking diplomatic peace? Will tensions cool down? Dubious. Will the peace be sustainable? Highly unlikely in the short term, and impossible in the long run.
Also, there is deterrence, Hamas lives literally next to you on the other side of the border. How can you ensure what had just happened days ago will not happen again? The precedents do not make a good case for a ceasefire proposal, and its guarantees of security.
Political scientist Ian Bremmer makes some sound advice on what to do if Netanyahu does not engage in a full-on ground war, he wrote on X:
i don’t know how israel can destroy hamas without killing tens of thousands of palestinian civilians and further radicalizing even more.
if i were advising netanyahu, i’d counsel him against an imminent ground war.
what would i rather see?
pressure (with us) to end qatar hosting hamas political leadership
continued targeting bombing and assassination campaign against hamas military leaders
immediate humanitarian aid for gaza civilians
time for far more refugees to leave northern gaza
this is not going to happen.
which is fucking sad, if i’m being honest with you
Adding on to releasing most, if not all, hostages taken by Hamas, it will be a near-perfect alternative. Yet, as Israeli military chatter and news reports suggest, Israel is going forward with a ground invasion.
This is where Biden’s strategy can come into play. Biden’s main message to Netanyahu is: We support you fully, but we don’t support you doing whatever you want. The US has an extremely close relationship with Israel, especially when it comes to military aid and financial assistance, which means it has a special leverage in persuading Israel not to overreact, or commit more human rights abuses in the Gaza Strip and Palestine as things move on. The Economist pointed out quite nicely, “Only America can save Israel and Gaza from greater catastrophe.”
What can Mr Biden do? His analysis must start with the need for peace between the Palestinians and Israelis and a recognition that there can be none for as long as Hamas governs Gaza—not after it has demonstrated that it puts Jew-hatred before any other goal. Gaza City is honeycombed by tunnels. Destroying Hamas’s ability to wage war therefore requires a ground offensive.
Everything follows from the prosecution of that ground war. The tragedy of Ahli Arab validates the cynical calculation that Palestinian casualties help Hamas by undermining support for Israel. The Israeli army needs to be seen to spare civilians, not least because it needs time to destroy Hamas’s tunnels. Gaza is on the brink. Poor sanitation threatens epidemic disease. Israel has at last agreed that some aid can cross into Gaza. Much more will be needed. If Egypt continues to bar refugees, Israel should go further by creating havens on its own territory in the Negev, supervised by un agencies.
It is also vital to spell out what comes after the invasion. Israel needs to show that its fight is with the terrorists, not the people of Gaza. It should pledge a new beginning after the war, with a programme of rebuilding and the promise that it will not strangle Gaza’s economy. It should support a new Palestinian constitution and new elected leaders. All this would be easier under a new Israeli government voted in when the war is done.
Even if Mr Biden can persuade Israel to take these steps, that leaves the hardest question of all. How to provide security in post-Hamas Gaza? Israel cannot occupy the enclave permanently. That idea was rightly abandoned in 2005. An international commitment is therefore needed. Because it is not clear who would join this, Mr Biden should start building a coalition now. The more Israel shows the Arab world that it is serious about protecting civilians and planning for the day after, the more likely Arab leaders are to play their part.
This is a tall order. Much can and will go wrong. Ordinary Arabs’ ingrained anti-Zionism will gnaw at their leaders’ willingness to help. But the alternative is the decay that feeds scavenger states like Iran and Russia. Mr Biden is the only leader who can pull things back together. If he fails, and the security of the Middle East crumbles, it will be a catastrophe for America, too.
Richard Haass of Foreign Affairs makes a sound case for what Biden should be doing, and I believe he is on the same page as the author at least for the first argument:
The first argument against a large-scale invasion is that its costs would almost certainly outweigh any benefits. Hamas does not present good military targets, as it has deeply embedded its military infrastructure in civilian areas of Gaza. An attempt to destroy it would require a large-scale assault in a densely populated urban environment, which would prove costly for Israel and lead to civilian casualties that would generate support for Hamas among Palestinians. Israel would also suffer extensive casualties, and additional soldiers could be abducted. If there is a historical analogy, it is closer to the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq than to what Israel accomplished in its 1967 and 1973 wars.
Employing massive force against Gaza (as opposed to more targeted action against Hamas) would also prompt an international outcry. Further normalization with Arab governments, above all Saudi Arabia, would be stalled; Israel’s existing relationships with its Arab neighbors would be put on hold or possibly even reversed. A large, prolonged military undertaking could also lead to a wider regional war, sparked either by a conscious decision by Hezbollah (urged on by Iran) to launch rockets against Israel or by spontaneous outbreaks of violence in the West Bank aimed at Israelis or at the Arab governments (especially those in Jordan and Egypt) long at peace with Israel.
Even if Israel crushed Hamas, what would follow? There is no alternative authority available to take its place. The Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank, lacks legitimacy, capacity, and standing in Gaza. No Arab government is prepared to step in and take responsibility for Gaza. Hamas or a facsimile would soon emerge, as happened after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
None of this is to argue that Israel should not act against Hamas. To the contrary, it must. Like any country, Israel has the right of self-defense, which allows it to strike terrorists who have attacked or are preparing to attack wherever they are. In addition, Israel must demonstrate the price to be paid by those who conduct such horrific attacks. How the Hamas attacks are answered, however, is a separate question. A different option would be to eschew a large-scale invasion and occupation of Gaza and instead carry out targeted strikes against Hamas leaders and fighters; Hamas’s military potential would be degraded, and Israeli military and Palestinian civilian casualties alike would be kept to a minimum. Israel should also reestablish military capabilities along its border with Gaza, which would help restore deterrence and make future terrorist attacks less likely.
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A second American goal must be to discourage any widening of the war. The biggest danger is Hezbollah, which possesses on the order of 150,000 rockets that can hit Israel, entering the fray. Again, the best way to achieve this is to persuade Israel to hold off on doing something large that will be broadly perceived as indiscriminate, as such action could create pressure—and an excuse—for Hezbollah to act.
The United States has a limited ability to keep Hezbollah at bay. Nor, as history suggests, does Israel have good options in Lebanon. But Washington could help by informing Iran that it will be held accountable for Hezbollah’s actions. That would require the United States to signal that it is prepared to inflict pain on Iran if Hezbollah attacks Israel, for example, by reducing Iran’s oil exports (now around two million barrels a day). Since much of that oil ends up in China, U.S. policymakers should consider letting their Chinese counterparts know that Washington is prepared to stop much of this trade by sanctioning those importing Iranian oil or, if necessary, by attacking select Iranian production or refining facilities. Beijing might be prepared to use its leverage with Iran, as the last thing the troubled Chinese economy needs is spiking energy costs. Washington should also put on indefinite hold any further relaxation of sanctions and reiterate the limits of its tolerance when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program.
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If and when the dust settles, there will be a need for sustained U.S. diplomacy, with the aim of resuscitating a two-state solution. American policymakers should point their Israeli counterparts to the lessons of Northern Ireland, where British strategy in the 1990s had two tracks. On one track, British policy was focused on establishing a large security presence and arresting or killing members of the provisional Irish Republican Army and other paramilitary groups; the British objective was to signal that violence would fail, that the IRA could not shoot its way to power.
But it was the second track that accounted for the eventual success of British policy, culminating in the 1998 Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreement, which effectively ended the three decades of violence known as the Troubles. This track gave IRA leaders the chance to participate in serious negotiations that promised to bring them some of what they sought if they would eschew violence. British policy made clear that they would achieve more at the negotiating table than on the battlefield.
The good news is that the strategy has already shown signs of working. From the Times of Israel, the country’s defense minister admitted pressure from the US made Israel agree to the 20 trucks of humanitarian aid to be shipped to Gaza from Egypt.
During the meeting, Defense Minister Yaov Gallant was pressed on why the government agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt before the hostages have been returned.
“The Americans insisted and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?” Gallant responds
And after reading from The Atlantic, I also believe Biden thinks his strategy works based on a more recent historical precedent.
Biden’s visit isn’t simply a dramatic gesture of solidarity born of his deeply felt Zionism. It is a strategic mission, an expression of his highly psychological approach to foreign policy—and of the insights into the Israeli psyche he’s gleaned through his many visits to the country and from his long relationship with that nation’s political elite.
A recent precedent captures his thinking. In May 2021, Hamas began firing rockets on Israeli cities. Biden told aides that he wanted to scrap the traditional playbook for navigating such a conflagration. Rather than dispatching his secretary of state to the region or calling for a cease-fire, he said that he wanted to smother Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—known as Bibi—with friendship. Or, as one White House aide described it to me, Biden wanted to “hug Bibi tight.”
This was a strategy built on an understanding of Israeli anxiety. The nation, historically encircled by enemies, desperately craves the affirmation of American friendship at its moments of peril. It needs to feel loved and secure when it fears for its existence. Instead of hectoring Israel, Biden wanted to bank emotional capital. He wanted Netanyahu to understand his own belief in Israel’s right to self-defense; and he wanted to show the Israeli public his steadfastness. Then, over the course of the conflict, he planned on drawing down the trust he had deposited, by guiding Netanyahu to the most prudent course of action.
During the 11 days of the 2021 conflict, Biden kept calling Netanyahu. As with the current war, Netanyahu’s strategic objectives weren’t entirely clear. Some in the Israeli military told their American counterparts that a ground invasion of Gaza was a live option. The risks of that weren’t hard to see. But instead of lecturing Netanyahu, Biden conducted the calls in the spirit of a Socratic dialogue. He would ask questions that forced Netanyahu to articulate his goals: How will this end? And how will you know when you’ve restored deterrence?
Biden had learned from the failures of the Obama administration. By adapting a more confrontational stance with Netanyahu, that administration may have pleased allies and domestic groups critical of Netanyahu, but it stoked Israeli insecurities. Instead of curtailing settlements or rushing to the peace table, the Israelis rebelled against the pressure. In fact, Biden personally suffered from this approach. When he visited the Jewish state in 2010, the Netanyahu government humiliated him by announcing the expansion of new housing in East Jerusalem. Rather than aborting his trip, which many back in Washington advised, Biden met up with Netanyahu and embraced him, saying, “This is a mess. How do we make it better?”
Now, the biggest problem is the risk factor. How much will Israel listen to Biden before the goodwill runs out and Netanyahu decides to do things purely on his terms? There is a chance things might escalate, despite him dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s, from the Hamas side, the Hezbollah side, or the Iranian side. Not to mention, the potential domestic blowback by the Muslim community and far-left liberals. Although the risk is substantial, and the rewards might be small, Joe Biden has to keep his strategy going. Because if Biden fails this time, the Middle East will plunge into the abyss.