Crossing the Red Line; Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, 2026
In a March 9, 2024, interview with MSNBC, Biden stated that an invasion of Rafah was a “red line,” adding that “you cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead”.
President Joe Biden’s primary “red line” regarding Israel’s military campaign in Gaza centered on a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, a southern city where more than 1 million Palestinian civilians were sheltering.
Israel launched its ground offensive and takeover of the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza in May 2024, following months of mass displacement into the city that had swelled its population to over 1.4 million people
Craving a Hero’s Departure October 2024-Januar;y 2025
The 2024 election brought democrats a dire rebuke of the relationship between their party apparatus and the voters they needed. Biden and his aides spent their final months in office smarting from Americans’ broad repudiation of their party and their obvious shortcomings on Gaza and other matters, including the pledge to move the country on from Trump. They responded by trying to burnish their legacy. They had limited time to confirm that they deserved positions of public trust, for posterity in the president’s case and for future career prospects in the case of his advisors. Once the election results were announced, officials had options for addressing a dysfunctional US Israeli dynamic and getting the Gaza ceasefire for which they wanted credit. They might pressure Netanyahu unlike ever before. They could even confirm that Israel broke various US laws, mandating a halt to some American military aid…Or they could trust in Trump, hoping he would change Netanyahu’s calculus and saying he (Trump) was vital to sustaining plans for the region–not withstanding his disregard for Palestinian life and US and international law, and his fickle attention span. Biden’s team chose the Trump track, rejecting a new course on policy and some restoration of faith in America’s commitment to human rights, though they had received new intelligence about Israeli misconduct and had reason to suspect any deal Trump oversaw would collapse.
The administration’s final moves on Gaza dealt lasting damage to Biden’s promise of sage global leadership, of upholding values like the law of war, and of encouraging Israeli-Palestinian amity. Almost always that was because of deliberate choices by officials still following a leader (Biden) many doubted.
A state department official “The president made a decision that he didn’t want his legacy to be anything other than a fully faithful defender of Israel to the very end.”
Sep 19, 2024 — The Uncommitted National Movement announced it will not endorse Vice President Harris but does not want supporters to vote for former President Trump. No Palestinian speaker had been allowed to address the Democratic National Convention
(Kamala) Harris repeatedly campaigned with Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman known for aggressive foreign policy preferences–including support for Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank–and a daughter of Iraq War architect Dick Cheney, whose endorsement Harris also touted.
Pledging Peace, Trump had become the first GOP candidate in twenty-four years to win Arab majority Dearborn, Michigan, and notched record support from Arab Americans in that state as well as from foreign born citizens nationally.
Officials had for months prior been quietly discussing a raft of new ways to use American leverage to change Israel’s behavior. After the vote (election), with famine once again confirmed in Gaza on November 8, the case for doing so seemed stronger and a meaningful way to use Biden’s waning power to have a lasting positive impact. As the administration began quashing those hopes, it publicly confirmed–including to Trump and Netanyahu–its limited ambition and fundamental cowardice in managing US-Israeli relations.
Overwhelmingly, it appeared clear that White House officials had internalized the belief that applying the law to Israel was an option, not a responsibility, and an undesirable one at that.
Even those who nitpicked about the case for Israeli accountability… said the administration was frozen on possible policy shifts not because of their merit but because the president and senior officials often embraced the narrative that a ceasefire was just around the corner.
Relief for families in Gaza and Israel again hinged on America’s political calendar, with the ceasefire set for four days later, the last full day of Biden’s presidency. Still Biden cast Israel’s battering of Gaza and Lebanon as boons that ‘changed the equation’ in the Middle East — and he and his team wanted immediate praise for their involvement.
Netanyahu soon broke the ceasefire and it remains broken without Israeli US consequences like limiting or stopping arms shipments or other sanctions.
The (Israeli War) in Gaza was shared by the two administrations, but its aftermath confirmed it was Biden’s decisions that ensured ongoing bloodshed — genocide, many increasingly said — even as he and his aids denied being answerable.
Biden’s inner circle had often described a sense of powerlessness, deflecting blame to Netanyahu, but it was hard to imagine that any of those officials (including Harris) could be trusted again with power either.
Trump’s similarity to Biden on Gaza meant his administration took US policies to their logical and disturbing next steps — boosting tensions and weakening Washington’s commitment to its highest ideals, whether of free speech and sustaining international institutions or justice for civilians. Domestically, Trump adopted and intensified the suggestion from the Biden White House that antiwar protests often defended Hamas and threatened Jews, citing that portrayal as an excuse to crack down on academia and to try deporting foreign students who questioned American policy toward Israel. Internationally, Trump built on Biden’s bid to limit critique of Israel with an overt assault on the International Criminal Court, slapping sanctions on court personnel and those helping them, such as Palestinian rights groups…It soon appeared the Trump administration was willing to torpedo the court altogether rather then let it examine the plain reality that Israeli policies allegedly amounting to war crimes were continuing and worsening.
Joe Biden with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken
As this book documents, Biden administration officials repeatedly chose to uphold a ghastly and self-defeating Gaza policy. They ignored off ramps and alternatives, contributing to hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent Palestinians, Lebanese, and Israelis, and creating a more dangerous world. Their attempt to rewrite history disrespect us all.
American hypocrisy on Israel Palestine was a constant throughout Biden’s life that he perpetuated, but his administration took it to lengths that made it unsustainable.
…Gaza has become a gut test for voters that demonstrates that when a figure means what he or she says and can be trusted, as was the case for New York City mayor Zohran Mandami, who drew attacks for his criticism of Israel but triumphed while standing by it.
In the aftermath of Biden’s Gaza policy, with the International Court of Justice likely to rule by 2027 on whether Israel’s campaign — impossible without US support — constituted genocide, and with the war firmly entrenched in millions of minds, future policymakers will need to address harder questions than whether they believe in Israeli-Palestinian equality, like what they will do to ensure it and whether Tel Aviv still deserves unparalleled economic, military, and diplomatic aid. No answer will be complete without an understanding of the period between October 7, 2023 and January 20, 2025.
Further reading:
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur Special Report Oct 9, 2026
Ungrounding; The Architecture of Genocide book by Eval Weizman 2026 Democracy.now Oct 30
Forensic Architecture Cartography of Genocide Israel’s Conduct in Gaza since Oct 2023