Bowen: Biden has decided strong words are not enough

President Biden has decided that strong words are not enough. Removing diplomatic protection from Israel’s conduct of the war is a significant step. It shows the depth of the rift that has opened between the White House and Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The US president is deeply attached to Israel and calls himself a Zionist.

He wants freedom for the hostages as well as the destruction of Hamas as a military force. But Mr Biden wants Israel to do that, as he put it, “the right way. More than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed with weapons mostly provided by the US. Israel claims that it always respects the laws of war and denies that it blocks humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.

But evidence has piled up that the Israelis are not telling the truth. The decision not to veto the Ramadan ceasefire resolution is also an attempt by the Americans to push back at accusations that they have enabled Israel’s actions. The US military is dropping aid by air and bringing a temporary dock across the Atlantic so that supplies can come to Gaza by sea. The US-Israel alliance is deep, but at times it is dysfunctional.

Crisis happen when Israel defies the wishes of American presidents, and harms what they see as US interests. Israel must decide now whether it will respect the resolution. If he does, the US will have to respond. Benjamin Netanyahu has infuriated the men in the White House.

But his defiance of the US has never been this prolonged, or bitter. No crisis in the long US-Israel alliance has been as serious as the one that’s developed in almost six months of the Gaza war.