After the atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel on 7 October, President Biden offered his total and unflinching support for retribution against the terrorist-designated rulers of the Gaza Strip. Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu vowed to annihilate every member of Hamas and to gain the release of the 252 Israeli and foreign hostages abducted and taken into Gaza. Biden agreed that these objectives were right and proper. So, too, did the UK government and other like-minded nations, appalled by the images and reports of slaughter, rape and brutality by Hamas.
Relations between Washington and Tel Aviv are not beyond repair
Nearly eight months later, that policy of unflinching support for Israel has gone through several stages of doubt, alarm, dismay and anger. What went so badly wrong? Did the Biden administration underestimate or misinterpret what Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing members of his cabinet had in mind? As a faithful and longstanding ally to Israel, did Biden naively trust Netanyahu to perform what many Middle East specialists saw as an impossible mission: to remove every trace of Hamas in Gaza by military force without inflicting suffering on the Palestinian people?
In other words, Netanyahu was promising not a total war, but a clinical dismantling of the Hamas leadership and organisational structure in Gaza.
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