On Monday afternoon, while enjoying ice cream with a TV talk show host, US President Joe Biden hinted that a new ceasefire in the war in Gaza would be within reach, perhaps as soon as this coming Monday.
“My national security advisor tells me that we are close,” he said.
His words, which the White House has since retracted, hit home with many in the US Palestinian community.
Then, on Tuesday night in Michigan, one of the key states in this November’s presidential election, more than 100,000 people voted as “independents” in the Democratic Party primaries as part of a protest organized by pro-Palestinian groups.
“This is a warning sign,” Lexis Zeidan, one of the organizers, said Tuesday night.
This has been a week in which Biden was reminded that the crisis in the Middle East, and the White House’s response to it, could become an electoral risk.
Since the beginning of the conflict after the October 7 attacks, the president has been caught in a vice, forced to make decisions about Middle East policy that inflame key parts of his coalition.
But The Biden administration is taking cautious steps when it comes to major policy changes. And despite the internal pressures expressed this Tuesday, his administration has largely maintained its current course.
During a briefing, State Department Press Secretary Matt Miller stated that the US continues to send assistance to Israel to support that country’s “legitimate right” to protect itself and prevent another attack like the one on 9/7 from occurring. October.
“There is a mistaken belief that the United States can order other countries to make sovereign decisions,” he said. “Israel makes its sovereign decisions. We make it clear when we disagree.”
Without attribution, government officials have mentioned that The US is considering postponing more weapons shipments to Israel as well as other measures.
Most opinion polls suggest that the general American public tends to support Israel in the conflict, although key sectors of Biden’s Democratic coalition – young voters and people of color – do not.
Internal political calculations are complicated. The government has to find a balance between opposing electoral groups within the Democratic Party who can also assert that they are essential for Biden’s re-election claims.
Pro-Palestinian groups in the US have called for a permanent ceasefire, support for UN diplomatic efforts and a threat to end US military assistance to Israel if it does not change course.
“People are upset, and you have to give them a reason not to be upset,” says Jim Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.
He describes the Biden administration’s efforts as “clumsy, lukewarm statements of how we regret not expressing greater solidarity and are working behind the scenes.”
The protest vote in Michigan turned out to be smaller than the margin by which Biden defeated his Republican rival Donald Trump in that state in 2020, but it is much more than the 10,704 votes by which Democrat Hillary Clinton lost to him in 2016 in that state. state.
“There is no doubt that there were some people in Michigan who wanted to send a message to the president”Mitch Landrieu, national president of the campaign, said Thursday.
“Every issue is complicated and this is one of them that needs to be worked on,” he explained.
In reality, while pro-Palestinian groups are a vocal minority, they are still a minority, says Derry Sragow, a California political consultant.
“There is a segment of the electorate that is very concentrated in Gaza, but it is very small”he assures.
“That’s not to say that how the president handles Gaza isn’t important, but it’s just another brushstroke on the canvas that voters will be considering when they cast their ballots.”
Polls show the American public is most concerned about the economy, immigration and abortion rights.
And even in Michigan, Sragow notes, There are equal numbers of Jewish voters who passionately support Israel as there are pro-Palestinian voters.. And Jewish voters continue to overwhelmingly support Democrats, with more than 70% having backed Biden in 2020 and with polls showing a majority agreeing with his handling of the war in Gaza.
With eight months until the election, the president’s campaign officials hope that the prospect of a binary option between Biden and Donald Trump will encourage dissenting voices within the Democratic political coalition to ultimately toe the line.
Campaign staff are already recalling a number of controversial policies Trump implemented during his presidency, such as moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and his support for Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
But with new headlines of civilian bloodshed in Gaza virtually every day, emotions are running high. This week the death toll in Gaza surpassed 30,000, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. And on Thursday, at least 117 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured during a humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza.
“We’re supposed to be in a position where they hurt us, they ignore us, they don’t pay attention to our feelings, but do we have to vote Democrat?” Zogby asks. “Why don’t they apply the same logic on the side of the Jewish community?”
Meanwhile, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been working to dash any White House hopes that a change in rhetoric will put more pressure on Israel to end the war.
“Since the beginning of the war, I have been leading a diplomatic campaign whose goal is to block all pressure to end the war prematurely,” he said this week.
Netanyahu also appears to be finally in tune with the US domestic political situation, and maintains that the American public overwhelmingly supports his cause.
All this points to the fact that Biden has few easy ways out of this current political bind.
“You have a very, very limited and difficult hand of cards to play with,” Sragow says.
“If I were a member of Biden’s group of senior advisors, I wouldn’t know what to tell him other than do what your heart feels is right,” he adds.
Pro-Palestinian groups in the US would probably echo that sentiment, except that they firmly believe that the president’s heart is in the wrong place and that he is about to pay a high political price for that in November.
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