October 7 anniversary: America’s year of failed diplomacy on Gaza

Washington has refused to rein Israel in as threat of regional war remains

US President Joe Biden, right, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on July 25, 2024. AFP

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Within days of the October 7 Hamas attacks, a who's who of senior US officials had visited Israel to reassure the Israeli government that President Joe Biden had their back, no matter what. One year on, it has become obvious the feeling is not mutual.

Time and again, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration has stymied US-led attempts to win a ceasefire, humiliating Mr Biden and making him appear subservient as America provides Israel with most of the weapons it is using to wage war in Gaza and Lebanon.

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has received more US aid than any other country. In April, Mr Biden signed off an emergency security package worth $14.3 billion.

Perhaps the most embarrassing moment for the Biden administration came during the UN General Assembly last month, where US, French and allied diplomats spent days frantically working on a three-week ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

But instead of weighing an end to the violence, Mr Netanyahu gave a fiery speech at the UN podium before approving – while still on US soil – the strike that would kill Hezbollah’s leader of three decades, Hassan Nasrallah.

That rebuff followed several other futile diplomatic efforts. In May, after months of unsuccessful attempts to broker a truce between Israel and Gaza, Mr Biden staked considerable political capital during an election year on Mr Netanyahu by declaring that Israel had put forward its own ceasefire proposal for Gaza.

In a detailed presentation from the White House, the US President spoke about how the phased ceasefire would bring an end to the violence. Again, Mr Netanyahu quickly rejected the plan.

On Friday, a reporter asked Mr Biden if he thought he had little influence over Mr Netanyahu.

“No,” the President said. “Look, our teams are in contact 12 hours a day, we are constantly in contact.”

Mr Biden, a self-described Zionist, has suffered politically for his support of Israel, facing anger from Arab and Muslim-American voters and dissent from within his own administration. Mr Netanyahu, a right-wing populist, shares little political common ground with Mr Biden and has appeared perfectly happy to ignore the US President or fob him off with vague promises, such as committing early on to end the war in Gaza by the end of 2023.

Despite this, the US has been reluctant to use its military support to Israel to put pressure on it to scale back attacks in Gaza, where more than 41,700 people have been killed. The toll is mounting in Lebanon too, where at least 2,000 people have been killed since October 8.

“We don't leverage our allies, and if we don't leverage most of our allies there is no way we're going to leverage the Israelis,” Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East analyst at the State Department, told The National.

“The last 12 months have demonstrated with a terrifying clarity the limitations of American power, and not just with Israel, with [Yahya] Sinwar, [Hassan] Nasrallah and Iran.”

Since the beginning of the conflict, the Biden administration has said it hoped to prevent the war in Gaza from spiralling into a regional conflagration. The failure of that stated policy goal is clear to see as Israel attacks Iran-backed targets in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza and Iran itself.

Daniel Levy, president of the US-Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator, said the Biden administration has focused on “holding allies together” rather than looking for ways to navigate out of the current crisis.

“At one stage their preferred outcome was de-escalation, and they went about it in a way that was indeed feckless, amateurish,” Mr Levy told The National.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made 10 trips to the Middle East since October 7. Each visit has been marked by some sort of Israeli repudiation and he has typically left the region with tension between Washington and Israel higher than when he arrived.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller defended US efforts over the last year.

“We don't expect any country in the world to do exactly what the United States thinks is in their best interest,” Mr Miller told reporters. “All we can do is be clear what we think is the right path forward … Independent, sovereign countries get to make their own choices and as I said, they have to live with the consequences of them.”

Thus far, the US has not imposed any real consequences on Israel, save for temporarily halting a shipment of large bombs in May over fears they would be used to kill civilians.

“Through a combination of diplomacy and deterrence, we have been able to calm tensions when they've been threatening to spiral out of control and prevent the outbreak of an all out regional war,” Mr Miller said.

“And now, obviously, is one of those times where, again, at a very fraught moment, we're going to continue to pursue diplomacy and deterrence to try to prevent escalation into that full conflagration.