The Memo: Biden faces ticking clock and rising pressure on Gaza

President Biden is confronting a crucial few days in the Middle East as political pressures pile up both in the region and at home.

Biden is pushing for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, though he has eased away from his earlier suggestion that such an agreement could come together by Monday. 

The Associated Press reported Saturday that Israel had agreed in principle to a six-week cease-fire that would see elderly, female and sick hostages released by Hamas. The news agency cited an unnamed senior U.S. administration official saying it was now up to Hamas to agree to those terms.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins March 10, adding urgency to the search for a deal.

Before that, on Thursday, Biden will deliver his final State of the Union address before the 2024 election.

It’s important for the president to be able to point to some kind of tangible progress if he is to dial down rising tensions with progressives over his vigorous support for Israel as the death toll mounts in Gaza.

The Gaza Health Ministry contends that the total death toll in Gaza is now over 30,000. The ministry is controlled by Hamas but its estimates of casualties in previous phases of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been broadly accepted as credible.

Israel’s assault on Gaza followed the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas that killed around 1,200 people in Israel.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told Time magazine on Thursday, “Of course, my hope would have been — and continues to be — we should have accomplished a cease-fire by now. … But, absent that, I would certainly hope that [Biden] speaks to the necessity of that” at the State of the Union.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), speaking with MSNBC’s Alex Wagner on Friday, took aim at Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and Biden’s support for him.

Sanders said it was his view that there should be “not another nickel for Netanyahu’s government if he’s going to continue this wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.”

Biden, by contrast, has continued to advocate for an additional $14 billion in aid to Israel, without conditions attached.

Also last week, six Democratic House members, led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), just back from a trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories, released a statement blasting Netanyahu’s “utter disregard for Palestinian lives” and expressed alarm that the Israeli prime minister was “moving toward the total destruction of Gaza.”

Beyond elected officials, the degree of disaffection within parts of the Democratic base over the president’s overarching support for Israel was underlined by last week’s Michigan primary.

More than 100,000 people cast ballots for “uncommitted.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Palestinian American and a forceful critic of Biden’s policies, was among those calling for the protest vote.

Outage over the reported deaths of more than 100 Palestinians as they sought food aid in northern Gaza on Thursday has intensified the political crisis even further. 

The specifics of what occurred are disputed, and some deaths appear to have been caused by trampling. But the Israeli military acknowledges opening fire on the crowd — it says its troops felt endangered — and a local hospital reported seeing dead and injured people who had suffered gunshot wounds.

A cease-fire would increase the chances of alleviating the severe suffering in Gaza, where about 1.8 million people have been displaced and the United Nations has estimated that more than half a million people are living amid “catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.”

On Saturday, the first American airdrops of food to Gaza began. Around 38,000 ready-to-eat meals were dropped. More such missions are scheduled.

The airdrops had been announced by Biden the previous day. At a Friday White House media briefing, national security communications adviser John Kirby said this was part of an effort to “pull out every stop to get more aid to people who desperately need it.”

But that measure, too, has come under criticism from some quarters, with skeptical voices asking why the administration cannot use its leverage with Israel to ensure more border crossings are open and to expedite the delivery of aid by land.

Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Algeria and Syria — holding the first post under former President George W. Bush and the second under former President Obama — wrote on social media Friday that in recent decades, “forcing USA to do airdrops of aid to Gaza … is Israel’s worst humiliation of USA I’ve ever seen.”

Biden aides argue his relatively mild criticisms of Israel are intended to preserve influence with Netanyahu and his government — widely seen as the most right-wing in the nation’s history.

The president also seemed sensitive, at least in the early stages following the Oct. 7 attacks, to Republican charges that he had emboldened U.S. enemies, including Iran, which is a major sponsor of Hamas.

But Biden faces the insoluble political problem that his own party is split over the broad issue of Israel and the Palestinians, partly along generational lines. As a rule, younger people are more likely to be sympathetic to the Palestinians, while older people are more favorable toward the Israelis.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday found that, among all registered voters, people under 30 sympathized with the Palestinians over the Israelis by 51 percent to 16 percent, whereas people 65 and over favored the Israelis 54 percent to 16 percent.

Among Democrats of all ages, a clear plurality backed the Palestinians, 42 percent to 26 percent.

The complex dynamics leave Biden with little room to maneuver — and in serious need of a cease-fire very soon.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.