There’s no denying that the Biden administration would like to see Israel change certain aspects of its conduct, analyst Giorgio Cafiero writes for Al Jazeera. Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consultancy.
White House officials have concerns about how the war in Gaza will impact the region in the long term but there are no signs that the administration wants to put any real pressure on Israel to make the changes it would like to see.
The Israelis understand that the opinions by the White House are just opinions, rhetoric is just rhetoric and if there’s no real pressure, this language doesn’t really mean anything.
Given the elections coming up, I don’t think that Biden wants to have a fight with the pro-Israel lobby. I doubt he will do much to challenge the Netanyahu government.
At the same time, as this war drags on and the humanitarian disaster worsens, we can see Biden paying a price politically. We can see voters who otherwise would have backed Biden decide to vote for a third party candidate, or not vote at all.
