Biden-netanyahu rift goes much deeper

As the war in Gaza grinds on, President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are locked in a public quarrel about military strategy, political leadership and even casualty numbers. Like past disputes in the relationship, this one will probably be resolved short of an open break — but it’s a tense moment.

The most visible disagreement has been about Netanyahu’s plan to attack Hamas’ remaining stronghold in Rafah along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. Netanyahu and a broad range of other Israeli officials believe that destroying the four Hamas battalions there, with about 3,000 fighters, is essential to break its military control in the territory.

Biden said in an interview with MSNBC this past weekend that Rafah was a “red line,” but it wasn’t clear just what that meant. Last month, Biden said Israel shouldn’t attack Rafah until it had a “credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety” of more than 1 million Palestinian refugees who have been driven there by the fighting, according to a White House summary of the conversation. Administration officials say they still haven’t seen such a plan.

“We’ll go there,” Netanyahu shot back on Sunday, adding: “You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That Oct. 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.” A senior Israeli official underlined that position in an interview on Wednesday. “If the administration says, ‘Never do Rafah,’ that won’t work. … You can’t do 80 percent of the job.”

But there might be less to the Rafah quarrel than it appears. Israel has promised the Biden administration that it will prepare a careful operational plan that includes protection of Palestinians and more humanitarian assistance. The Israeli Defense Forces won’t move forward without a detailed tactical scenario that has been shared with the White House.

“We won’t suddenly invade Rafah. It takes time to prepare a plan,” explains the senior Israeli official. Israeli officials won’t discuss how long this planning might take. But it seems likely to require weeks, and it could even stretch past the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in April. In any event, a Rafah confrontation doesn’t seem imminent.

A deeper disagreement is about whether Netanyahu and his right-wing government really have united the country behind a clear endgame for the conflict. U.S. intelligence analysts were openly skeptical of Netanyahu’s leadership prospects in their annual threat assessment, delivered to Congress this week.

“Netanyahu’s viability as a leader as well as his governing coalition of far-right and ultraorthodox parties that pursued hard-line policies on Palestinian and security issues may be in jeopardy,” the threat assessment noted. “Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened. … A different, more moderate government is a possibility.”

That’s unusually blunt language for a public intelligence report, and Israeli officials protested what they saw as an effort to meddle in Israeli internal politics by, in effect, “weaponizing” the intelligence reporting. Netanyahu’s team was already peeved about what it saw as an attempt by Vice President Harris to drive a wedge into Israeli politics when she said on CBS News on Sunday: “It’s important to distinguish and to not conflate the Israeli government with the Israeli people.”

What’s happening here is that long-standing private disputes are becoming public. For months, administration officials have explored ways they might prod other Israeli leaders, such as former army chief of staff Benny Gantz, to challenge Netanyahu, who polls show is deeply unpopular at home. But trying to steer political outcomes with a democratic ally can easily backfire. The most fundamental disagreement is about the state of the war itself. Netanyahu speaks as if victory is close. That’s why he wants to take Rafah soon and, in his mind, be done with it. But U.S. officials think Israel is overestimating the damage it has done to Hamas, and doubt that Netanyahu still has a pathway for securing Gaza and stabilizing the region, even if he demolishes the four battalions in Rafah.

Here, again, the U.S. intelligence community offered a pointed assessment in Monday’s testimony: “Israel probably will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come, and the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas’ underground infrastructure.”

Israeli officials offer detailed statistics to back their claim that the war has been effective. When the fighting began, Hamas and other militias had about 35,000 fighters; of those, more than 25,000 have been killed, captured or injured, the officials said. Of the smaller subset of Hamas regular fighters, they said 12,000 have been taken off the battlefield, including about 60 percent of battalion commanders.

U.S. intelligence estimates project “far fewer” Hamas casualties, a U.S. official said. That’s in part because the United States counts battlefield casualties differently. But there’s a stark difference between Israeli and American evaluations of the campaign.

The tunnel war has been the most vexing part of the Gaza assault. Israeli officials say they spent weeks devising tactics to attack a vast network of zigs and zags that they estimate is 380 miles long, all within a territory just 25 miles long and up to 7½ miles wide. Israeli officials say they’ve destroyed about 60 percent of Hamas’ command-and-control facilities in the tunnels and 90 percent of its buried arsenal of rockets, which totaled 15,000 to 20,000 when the war began.

But Israel officials concede they’ve only begun destroying Hamas’ underground empire. Less than 30 percent of the tunnels have been captured, several officials said. And even now, Hamas still is operating smuggling tunnels into Egypt.

Finally, on the baseline question of what Gaza will look like “the day after,” U.S. and Israeli officials agree there is still no clear answer. That’s one reason Biden mistrusts Netanyahu. The White House doubts the Israeli leader has a sound strategy for ending a conflict that has brutalized Israel, has had a shattering effect on Palestinian civilians and is increasingly harmful to U.S. interests around the world.