Biden could have had the best presidential record – Gaza destroyed it

America became stronger, but it was still dragged around by Israel

Critics say Biden's failure to rein in Israel is a permanent stain on his presidency. AFP

US President Joe Biden may be on the brink of finally securing a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, but his atrocious mishandling of that devastating conflict will leave a terrible and lasting bloodstain splattered over the record of what might have otherwise been one of the great presidencies of recent decades. It’s a tragedy, an outrage and a shame that will linger over US foreign policy for many years to come.

Mr Biden presided over a remarkable string of domestic legislative achievements, with just a tiny majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in his first two years. It was arguably the finest domestic record since Lyndon B Johnson in the early 1960s. This ground-breaking legislation addressed climate change, health care, pandemic relief, industrial policy and many more crucial issues.

On foreign policy, his record was generally also otherwise quite strong. While critics say he should have done more to aid Ukraine, he did support that country sufficiently to fight off the Russian onslaught that Moscow assumed would rapidly put the Kremlin in charge of Kyiv in mere days. Instead, the struggle is now over crucial southern areas of the country, but not its capital or most of its territory.

He expanded Nato for the first time in years, to include two powerful additions: Finland and Sweden. These two countries resisted joining the Atlantic alliance for decades, believing they could rely on themselves and their wits to fend off Russian hegemony and territorial ambitions. This greatly strengthens the US hand in Europe.

There is much more to be said in favour of Mr Biden’s successes. But the tally sheet is indelibly smeared with the blood of Palestinians in Gaza.

At least 46,600 Palestinians are estimated to have died, but experts believe the true number may be much greater. This certainly doesn’t include those still buried under the rubble or those who were buried in homes or by relatives and never made it to morgues or hospitals where the official counts take place.

If the ceasefire is successful, it may be possible for international organisations to enter Gaza and seriously and impartially calculate the true cost. But whatever it is ultimately determined to be, 46,600 – mostly civilians, and quite possibly mostly children given the demographic realities in Gaza – is already unimaginable.

On the evening of October 7, 2023, after the brutal Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to Israeli television and vowed to exact “a mighty vengeance” for the killing of about 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians. The war in Gaza has achieved little else, but the “mighty vengeance” certainly took place, and it did so with US support of every variety.

Mr Netanyahu might as well have been echoing the Roman senator Cato the Elder, who began and ended his speeches declaring “Carthaginem esse delendam”, or “Carthage must be destroyed”. Gaza, he seemed to be saying in word and deed, must be destroyed. And so it has.

The Biden administration supplied Israel ample weapons for this mission of raw vengeance, supported it rhetorically, defended it diplomatically – including at the UN Security Council – and encouraged it in every possible way, at least for the first six months. Not until the campaign reached the Egyptian border at Rafah did Mr Biden begin to caution major restraint, and he was essentially ignored.

The only major thing the Biden administration did to express real opposition to Israel’s rampage was to withhold the resupply of a shipment of 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs before the attack on Rafah, but this was probably more aimed at the effort to prevent Israel from spreading the war into Lebanon, which had reached a critical point at that time.

The Biden administration’s approach to the Gaza war was not intentionally an immoral one. No one from the President on down actively wanted Palestinian civilians to be killed. On the contrary, the US, along with the UAE, Qatar and the UN – as well as a whole range of humanitarian NGOs – was instrumental in trying to actually get humanitarian aid into Gaza in spite of Israel’s disturbingly effective efforts to use food and medicine as a weapon of war.

Rather it was an amoral policy. The administration wanted, above all, to stop the war from spreading beyond Gaza, believing that – to paraphrase the advertisement for Las Vegas – “what happens in Gaza stays in Gaza”. What Mr Biden truly feared was a broader regional war, and he was determined to stop it from spreading in a way that might drag in the US and even Iran.

So, Mr Biden ended up miscalculating badly, supporting the Gaza war in order to avoid a Lebanon war. And when Israel pursued the Lebanon war – capitalising on Hezbollah’s unbelievable miscalculation of thinking it could maintain an ongoing low-level confrontation with Israel without being suddenly sucked into a major war – he ended up supporting that, too, in order to avoid a war with Iran.

Thus, the US ended up being dragged around by its own Israeli client in a remarkable inversion of power and influence. Mr Biden only firmly pulled the leash when Israel might have attacked Iranian oil or nuclear installations in response to Tehran’s second missile barrage against Israel. But, noting the failure of Israel’s Arrow anti-missile system (the Iranian bombs largely fell, but in irrelevant places), Mr Biden did reward Israel’s compliance with major new missile-defence systems, gratis of course.

The Biden administration may leave office next week crowing that it has ended the Gaza war. But in fact, it presided over a ghastly and bloody massacre that the atrocious and indefensible mayhem of October 7, 2023 could in no way justify.

His defenders may say he had no choice. Or that the war in Sudan, in which the US is barely involved, is worse than the war in Gaza. Or any other rationalisation. But the reality is that most of the international community, and especially most of the Arab and Muslim peoples, will never regard Mr Biden and his colleagues with anything other than a fully justifiable outrage.

Insiders may have viewed this policy as amoral, rational and guided by fully defensible raison d’etat. In practice, however, it was grotesquely immoral.

All Neptune’s great ocean can’t wash away that blood clean from his hands.