President Biden is counting on the Israeli public to support his push for a cease-fire deal with Hamas that includes the release of remaining hostages held by the group, even as the president’s criticism of Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip has stirred controversy.
While Biden’s initial support for Israel in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack won him support across the country’s political spectrum, his growing pressure on Israel over its military operations in southern Gaza has triggered blowback in large circles of Israeli society.
“More and more Israelis are taking a less positive, less empathetic attitude towards the United States, and that’s going to undermine the relationship,” said Yoav Fromer, head of the Center for the Study of the United States at Tel Aviv University.
That trend is largely playing out among allies and supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has been magnified by Biden’s pressure campaign on Israel to accept a cease-fire deal.
In response to the proposal, far-right and extremist members of his coalition are threatening to disband the government by resigning if Netanyahu accepts a deal.
“This is an existential threat to U.S.-Israeli relations, and I say that as a historian of U.S. relations … we’ve always had low points,” said Fromer.
‘We don’t have an anti-war movement in Israel’
U.S. support for Israel has become a controversial topic among Israelis, who recognize America as their most important ally but are growing frustrated with Biden’s increasing criticism against the military operation in Gaza.
“Almost everyone supports the war, the question is until when, and what kind of activities are considered necessary and legitimate,” said Tamar Hermann, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s (IDI) Viterbi Center for Public Opinion.
“We don’t have an anti-war movement in Israel.”
But there is plenty of separation in how the public views Netanyahu’s handling of the war, and Biden’s efforts to pressure him.
“I would say we don’t have any Israeli public opinion — we have Israeli public opinions,” Hermann said.
“Therefore the attitudes towards the United States are very different between the left, the center and right.”
The right-wing constituency poses the biggest hurdle for Biden’s diplomacy. Israelis who identify as politically right wing represent about 55 to 60 percent of the country, Hermann said.
“The [U.S.-built] pier for example, it was perceived as a knife in the back of Israel, certainly on the right, who oppose delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza until Hamas releases the hostages,” Hermann said of the faulty, American-built floating pier for delivering humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
Uzi Dayan, a retired Israeli general, former national security adviser and member of Israel’s Parliament in Netanyahu’s Likud party until 2021, criticizes what he views as an American flip-flopping on support for Israel.
“At the beginning, everybody said … ‘We will back you and give you [support] to achieve the goal of the war, which is to eliminate Hamas.’ Later on, they say, ‘Well it depends on humanitarian issues, but we are going to help you and give you full support to free all the hostages,’” he said.
“And it ends up by saying, ‘OK, we’re still your good friends, but we have some humanitarian issues that we want you to follow humanitarian rules.’ So we are very disappointed.”
And like many on Israel’s right, he rejects America’s policy supporting a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.
Netanyahu has tried to balance the need for maintaining support among a right-wing constituency who rejects, completely, a Palestinian state, and engaging with Biden over an ambiguous, Palestinian-civilian led territory that is demilitarized.
“There is no sane Israeli that they are still thinking about two states for two people,” Dayan said.
Pushing for a pathway to end the war
Biden is calling for an end to the war between Israel and Hamas and on Friday afternoon announced what he called an Israeli-sanctioned cease-fire proposal for Hamas.
A White House official told The Hill that the president’s speech was not strategically timed to take place after Shabbat, when religiously observant Jews, including the prime minister, generally turn off their phones and electronics for 24 hours.
“Regarding timing on Friday, that was purely driven by the president’s schedule and nothing else,” the official said, adding the proposal was transmitted Thursday.
But it had the effect of minimizing initial blowback for the proposal in Israel until Shabbat ended Saturday night.
This meant many far-right Israelis did not hear about the proposal until Saturday evening, local time.
Netanyahu’s response to Biden’s announcement has not been encouraging. In his first public remarks Monday acknowledging the Biden-announced proposal, the prime minister said “claims that we have agreed to a ceasefire without our conditions being met are incorrect.”
While Netanyahu has previously shown a willingness to bend to Biden’s demands, the stakes for his governing coalition — and political future — have never been higher.
“It appears that Netanyahu is not driven by Israel’s national security interests. He’s driven by Netanyahu’s interest,” said Fromer.
But Biden’s proposal appeared to gain the endorsement of Israel’s antigovernment protest movement — largely made up of Israel’s political left and center wing — with tens of thousands of Israelis rallying in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Saturday night calling for a cease-fire deal to secure the release of the hostages.
“Last night, we received a reminder of what a real leader looks like, who cares for Israel’s future and not his own. Thank you President Biden,” said Shaul Meridor, former head of the Israeli Finance Ministry’s budget department, who gained widespread attention for his 2020 resignation in protest against Netanyahu’s government.
Hamas has yet to respond to the latest cease-fire proposal, and Biden has called on Qatar and other Arab states to help exert full pressure toward a deal.
An IDI poll conducted in mid-May found a large majority on the left and in the center in Israel consider a deal for the release of hostages to be the highest priority (92.5 percent and 78 percent, respectively).
Israel’s center- and left-wing political parties are eyeing a challenge to Netanyahu and his right-wing bloc. Israeli opposition lawmakers from the left and right have had discussions over uniting to form a more robust coalition. And they are looking to pick off Netanyahu’s coalition members to trigger a government collapse that would necessitate new elections.
The souring of U.S. and Israeli relations are one of many motivating factors for a growing movement seeking to oust Netanyahu, even as there’s concern that Biden is going too far on criticisms toward Israel.
“I’ll say something that most Israelis don’t like to hear: We are depending on American aid very much,” said Moshe Tur-Paz, a member of the Knesset for the opposition party Yesh Atid.
“We would have had to stop terror fighting on the fifth day if it wasn’t for America and a few Western countries. That’s the truth … Yes, Israel needs American dollars, and the veto in the United Nations, etc., in order to be strong enough. And that’s our relationship,” he said in discussion with visiting journalists in Jerusalem in mid-May.
But it’s a balance, he continued.
“We’re not the 51st state in the United States. We are an autonomous country, we have our own interests. When we attacked Iraq in 1981, President Reagan said ‘no, no, no, you shouldn’t have done this.’ Israel knows how to run its own interest and security, yet you have allies, and America is a very important ally for us, and you have to have a good relationship to keep up the high standard of the army, of security and civilian life in Israel.”
Waiting for an ‘old, new president’
Biden’s interventions in Israel’s war have only eroded support on the country’s right, from his increasing criticism of the Palestinian civilian death toll and holding back a shipment of heavy bombs and threatening to cut off military deliveries, to sanctioning Israeli settlers and pushing for Israel to facilitate increasing shipments of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“I think that President Biden is not doing enough, at all, for our hostages. If he wanted to, he could press Qatar,” said Tzvika Mor, the father of 24-year-old Eitan Mor, who was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 and is still being held hostage in Gaza.
Mor, who lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, is part of a fringe group among the hostage families that rejects negotiations with Hamas to release the hostages and instead calls for Netanyahu to pursue an unapologetic military campaign in Gaza.
The movement in Israel to establish settlements in the West Bank — which are considered illegal by the majority of the international community — are a key constituency that Netanyahu relies on to maintain his grip on power.
This group saw the first Trump administration align closely with their policy views: moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem; recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; engaging with the settlements as if they are part of sovereign Israeli territory; and removing pressure on the Israeli government to negotiate with the Palestinians.
The Trump-era Abraham Accords — which established ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — reinforced for this group that growing ties in the region were not contingent on peace with the Palestinians.
But Fromer, of Tel Aviv University, said Trump’s supporters in Israel fail to appreciate the former president’s changing attitudes toward the Jewish state.
“Trump is very beloved here. No one here is making the actual connection about how mercurial he is, that he’s shifted. And no one’s listening to what he’s actually saying about Netanyahu and about Israel. He’s been very critical of Israel,” he said.
In an IDI poll conducted in early May, 42.5 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed said a second Trump presidency would be good for Israel, while only 32 percent said Biden is the better president for Israel’s interest. (Israeli Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population, and in the survey, 68 percent didn’t see a difference between Trump or Biden).
“Many people on the right — not everyone of course — are waiting for a new president. Or an old, new president,” said Hermann, of IDI.
However, the souring view of Biden in some circles is unlikely to transform Israeli attitudes toward the U.S. more generally, she added.
“They are complicated relations, but basically when we ask people who is the best friend of Israel, the United States is still on top, and will be on top,” Hermann said.
“Of course the numbers may change a bit, but basically it is being perceived as Israel’s greatest friend.”