(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . President Biden and Former President Obama caution Israel [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-24 Former President Bill Clinton isn't very popular here, but I learned something from him. Undoubtedly a lot of you who are much smarter than I am already knew this, but I had not really thought about it before. He said that it was much wiser to be very supportive in public with some organization, person, or nation that you are trying to negotiate with and privately lay down some markers that you simply can't accept than to act tough and critical in public and be weak and submissive in private. For some time, I have written that I suspected that part of President Biden's strategy in being so supportive publicly of Israel was to give him room and space to warn or even criticize Netanyahu in private. I had not read anything from the media suggesting this. It was my own read on the situation. . Prime Minister Netanyahu is unpopular at home. He has been pursuing a legal overhaul to protect himself, similar to what Donald Trump would do to protect himself if he were in power. Some Israelis may believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu's focus upon the legal overhaul caused him to take his eyes off the ball, off protecting the nation, and thus enabling the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th to take place. . Therefore, Prime Minister Netanyahu may feel like he has nothing to lose. He may feel that a major military conflict could lead Israeli citizens to back him as it becomes 'rally around the leader ' time. Consequently, I feel like if President Biden had not made the moves he did, then Netanyahu was likely to raze Gaza to the ground, to completely destroy it. However, that is likely to result in mass Palestinian civilian casualties. That likely would have caused the military conflict to widen. Iran would likely even further help the terrorist organizations that they sponsor, Hezbollah and Hamas, commit terrorist attacks. This would also have further enraged the Arab populations in various Arab nations, even those which have in recent history been allies of the United States. This would have made it difficult for kings and other autocrats who run Arab nations and other Middle East nations to be seen with or work with United States President Joe Biden. . However, by as journalists and experts below say, President Biden's forthright support for Israel and even being the first US president to visit Israel during a military conflict earned him support from and credibility with Israeli citizens. Equally important for this plan to work is an insistence that Israel abide by the Geneva convention, the rules of war, the rule of law, and prioritize avoiding mass Palestinian civilian casualties. This was crucial because President Biden backing away from Israel could not be seen to be out of the blue. Prior to this strong support for Israel, the loss of the backing of the United States and the federal government of the United States would not have been as great a loss. Now, due to the ground work President Biden laid down, I believe that Israeli citizens would be very upset with Prime Minister Netanyahu if his actions which led to mass Palestinian civilians caused President Biden and the United States to no longer support him and Israel because he rejected advice to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties. On the other hand, if President Biden had endorsed whatever Prime Minister Netanyahu did without any exceptions names, then President Biden might have looked unstable and erratic if he suddenly stopped supporting Israel and Israel's prime minister. Now, he is in a position in which he has maximized the potential influence he could have upon Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel. Thus, President Biden's cautions to Prime Minister Netanyahu to avoid any event that could result in mass Palestinian civilian casualties have the maximum chance of success. A military campaign to obliterate Gaza would face a serious challenge for at least two reasons. First, Hamas knows Gaza far better than the IDF. Urban military warfare is very difficult and usually produces a lot of casualties on both sides, especially upon the aggressor. Second, they must confront a complex set of tunnels, navigate them, and take control of them. None of which is easy and some of it may be impossible. A third reason would be that such a military campaign is likely to elicit attacks from terrorist organizations like Hamas which has already committed a terrorist attack on them and Hezbollah and their sponsor, Iran. President Biden's administration is making these points and others clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu. And now Former President Obama has echoed President Biden's message to Israel of caution. A guest on Morning Joe said exactly and explicitly what I have been saying for more than a week. Below you will find a transcription (by me) of relevant parts of Morning Joe to buttress my statements and quotations showing President Biden and Former President Obama supporting Israel but also calling for Israel to avoid any actions like a careless ground offensive that are likely to result in mass Palestinian civilian casualties. Katty Kay, "Yeah, the Brits have moved naval assets into the region as well. So they are very much in lock-step, the government is very much in lock-step, but there is some disconnect between the governments and the people, you have very big pro-Palestinian demonstrations in France, you have pro Palestinian demonstrations in London, and if you look at the domino effect of this, of any kind of big scale invasion of Gaza and even the atrocities that you know, the killings that we're seeing in the Southern part that we're seeing in the moment, I just came back from London, it gets much more play in the European press than it does in the American press even, the Americans are trying to cover it too, but the dominoes will be that the Arab world gets impatient with the Israelis, loses faith with the Israelis, the Europeans lose with the Israelis, then the fear would be that the Americans do too if this ground invasion were to go on for a long time and we were to see night after night images of Palestinians being bombed in Gaza." Jonathon LeMire, " Yes certainly those images could further sway public opinion. Administration officials in Washington I have spoken with over the last couple of days they note that Israel has built this 300,000 plus reservist force near the border and there is only so long you can keep a group of that size there because there are economic impacts, logistical impacts, and at a certain point the order has to be given to go, but Israel right now is listening. US officials tell me they are very careful, they are not dictating military strategy, they want to make that very clear, a three star US Marine General over there now, other top officials as well advising Israel as to what the fight may hold ahead when they do go in and how difficult it will be and there is a sense here, senior Biden aides tell me that because the president has been so forthright with his support for Israel, going to Tel-Aviv, delivering speech after speech here in the United States backing the Israeli cause, he's bought some currency there and that Israel may be more inclined to listen to him , that they feel like he's bought in with him and therefore, they are more willing to listen to his message of take it slow. Be patient. Do the right thing. " . . A profound issue defying a simple solution as many people here are aware of is the existence of a complex set of deep and confusing tunnels. . Wikipedia explains the tunnels in and under Gaza . . Richard Engel says, " But I think the United States is its closest ally and is urging caution and is doing so in a way (in that) is (it has) publicly acknowledged (the counsel) that does give the Israeli government a little bit of breathing room because the people here are angry. They are furious. They want to see a military response and they want to see it now. So now if this government can say, 'We are attacking, we are working, we are freeing some hostages, and our allies are pushing for time, it does give them a bit more space to come up with a plan because going into Gaza is not going to be easy . Just going back to the tunnel story where these hostages are being held. I spoke to a senior Hamas official yesterday who said that the hostages are being held in multiple locations. I personally have been in tunnels in Gaza, not these fighting tunnels, smuggling tunnels, but the entire Gaza strip is flat, it's along the sea, so the ground quite soft and sandy and for years the Palestinians have been digging these tunnels and they are extraordinarily deep. You have one tunnel leading to another, they're many different layers to them. It's an entire labyrinth under Gaza. So, in order to deal with that, it is going to take not just two weeks of planning like Israel has had right now in response to these attacks that took place on October 7th. " ​​ . Richard Haas said, "What we're seeing is a slow release of them (the hostages being held by Hamas). Hamas is trying to buy time. So that's one situation and is Israel is loathe to go in while hostages are being released and (unintelligible followed by a cough). And the United States is worried about American hostages. So that slows things down. There's also negotiations, as you said, about these . But I think what is quietly happening is US defense officials are spending a lot of time with their Israeli counterparts and basically saying, ' Do you really understand how hard this is. And there's two phases. One is actually, you've been talking about it here, the military phase of urban close in combat. It's just a nightmare! Particularly since Hamas will know the terrain better than anybody. And then what the Americans are saying is a little bit from our experience in places like Afghanistan. Just say that we're wrong and you're right. Just say things go a little bit better than we anticipate. What then? To whom do you hand over authority? There's no other authority right now other than Hamas. There's no one else in Gaza. The idea that the people who can't run the West Bank are going to run Gaza, that's preposterous. The Egyptians and other Arab want no part of it. The UN is feckless. So, what else do you have to work with? The idea that you go in , clean 'em out, hand it over and walk out, it's just a pipe dream. And that's just the Israeli problem. So my hunch is emotions are intense, so what's happening is the hard making of foreign policy, is. There would be nothing worse than, can you imagine anything worse for Israel than that it went in big, and then three weeks or three months later, they said, 'This isn't working ' and then that would almost add a failure on top of a failure. So I think you're having a little bit of a slowing down here. " Joe Scarborough said, "Well, I mean they're guaranteed if they have a quote 'successful military operation' in Gaza, they're guaranteed to find themselves back in the same situation they were in 2005 where they said, 'We don't want to govern this place. ' And so then they'll have to leave it again, this goes back to the talk about fighting the war with peace in mind. They have to fight the war against Hamas in such a way that other Arab countries will come in with the United Nations, with the United States, with other parties. And have a peacekeeping force there, if that's possible. " . Richard Haas, " Joe Biden is the most popular man in Israel, much more so than Netanyahu. " . . Former President Obama cautions Israel . WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Some of Israel's actions in its war against Hamas, like cutting off food and water for Gaza, could "harden Palestinian attitudes for generations" and weaken international support for Israel, former U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday. In rare comments on an active foreign policy crisis, Obama said any Israeli military strategy that ignores the human costs of the war "could ultimately backfire." "The Israeli government's decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population (in Gaza) threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel's enemies, and undermine long-term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region," Obama said. . President Biden cautions Israel against occupying Gaza . . Biden Warns Israel Not to Occupy Gaza While the president has stood strongly behind Israel since Hamas attacked, he said on “60 Minutes” that a new occupation of Gaza would “be a big mistake.” President Biden warned Israel in an interview aired on Sunday not to reoccupy Gaza, his first significant public effort to restrain America’s ally in the wake of the Hamas assault that killed more than 1,300 people, including at least 29 Americans. Mr. Biden has offered staunch support for Israel since the Oct. 7 attack and refused to criticize Israel for its retaliatory siege of Gaza, the coastal enclave controlled by Hamas, even as U.N. officials have warned of a humanitarian crisis there. But in the new interview, he cautioned against a full-scale occupation of Gaza. “I think it’d be a big mistake,” Mr. Biden told “60 Minutes” on CBS in a conversation taped on Thursday and aired on Sunday night. “Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people. And I think that it would be a mistake for Israel to occupy Gaza again.” But “taking out the extremists” there, he added, “is a necessary requirement.” . . . One chyron says, "U.S. advises Israel to delay ground offensive" The title of an AP article is, "US advises Israel that delay in ground offensive could allow release of more hostages" . . . . The group with Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough is composed of: President Emeritus of the Counsel on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas US Special Correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kay Willie Geist Richard Engel [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/10/24/2201336/-President-Biden-and-Former-President-Obama-caution-Israel Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/