When Joe Biden announced that he was giving up on re-election on Sunday, there were only a few hours left for Benjamin Netanyahu to leave Tel Aviv for Washington for a speech in Congress and a week of high-level meetings: the three main engagements remain, but two of his interlocutors, the President and his vice, Kamala Harris, have changed status. For the Israeli Prime Minister, the most important meeting would be the third one, with Donald Trump, but Biden’s decision may also have forced him to realize that it might be too early to bet everything on a Democratic defeat in November.
Until January, it will be Biden controlling “the delivery of American ammunition to Israel, as well as the level of U.S. diplomatic support at the United Nations, at a time when global scrutiny of Israel has rarely been so high,” writes the The New York Times. “Of course, Netanyahu benefits from a weak Biden,” but he also “needs him,” Mazal Mualem, an Israeli commentator and biographer of the Prime Minister, told the newspaper.
In fact, several analysts believe that this new Biden, who will reappear in office precisely to welcome Netanyahu this Thursday, will be a head of state less weakened than Netanyahu expected to find.
Biden has just become a special lame duck President: instead of the usual two months, between November and January, he has six months to close his presidency, a period in which the certainty of leaving weakens but also liberates.
“If we look at the next six months, one of the most important things for Biden is to end the war in Gaza, to reach the day after,” Dennis Ross, a diplomat and member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the Financial Times. “In a way, this Administration will have more freedom to do so and the people in it will have an even greater sense of mission to achieve it.”
For weeks, Israeli newspapers have described a Prime Minister “buying time until November, racing against the clock, in the hope of a Trump victory and a Republican administration that would place fewer restrictions on Israel than the current one regarding the conduct of the war” (The Jerusalem Post).
This would explain the decision to add new conditions to the agreement negotiated by the U.S. to impose a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages, in what was described as “the most brazen and disturbing attitude of all that [Netanyahu] has done before,” wrote the digital newspaper Politico, noting that this happened right after Hamas dropped the demand that had until then been the biggest obstacle to an agreement, accepting to leave the end of the war for a later phase of the negotiations.
In theory, Biden’s ability to pressure Netanyahu has diminished; in practice, the Israeli leader was already acting as if Biden was leaving – and now he has to adapt his strategy to Harris’s candidacy.
The Vice President has made harsh criticisms of Israel (some analysts talked about a “good cop, bad cop” strategy from the White House) and might attract some young and progressive voters who are critical of the support for Israel, but essentially, “she is a moderate Democrat with strong ties in the Jewish community,” summarizes the Jerusalem Post. Biden’s biggest current constraint will indeed be not to harm his candidacy.
Biden, writes columnist Herb Keinon in the Israeli daily, also knows that Netanyahu – and the world – expect less from him. And it is precisely for this reason, he suggests, that “he can very well use the meeting with Netanyahu to publicly pressure the Prime Minister, demonstrating to the world that he is still in charge.”