The Daily - Biden Is Trying to Rein In Israel. Is It Working?

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

As the cease-fire in Gaza has ended and the fierce fighting there has resumed, the United States has issued sharper warnings to Israel’s leaders that they have a responsibility to avoid civilian casualties.Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, discusses the public and private ways in which President Biden is trying to influence Israel’s conduct.Guest: Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Analysis: Biden’s strategy faces a test as Israeli forces push into southern Gaza.The U.S. is pressing Israel and Hamas to resume talks, a White House official said.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Over the past eight weeks, what started as unwavering public support of Israel from President Biden and his cabinet has now given way to something else. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating. Growing skepticism of Israel's approach. The way Israel defends itself matters. It is capable of neutralizing the threat posed by Hamas while minimizing harm to innocent men, women, and children. And it has an obligation to do so.

And at times, open disapproval of its tactics. I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative. Today, Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker reports on the public and private ways that the Biden White House is trying to influence Israel's conduct and whether it's working. It's Friday, December 8th. Peter, good morning. I just want to explain where you are, as best I can tell. You seem to be at the White House in the kind of room where somebody might walk by and say something. I am. Good morning. I'm at the White House. I'm in a broom closet we call the press room. And we have pool duty today, so I'm here to follow the president around, whatever he ends up doing.

Right. So if there's some ambient noise, that's the cost of working out of the White House. Yeah, I'm afraid so. So we wanted to talk to you, Peter, as a White House correspondent, because over the past week or so, as the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has ended, and this war has resumed in a very fierce way, the way that the Biden administration, the way the White House talks about Israel, and specifically how Israel is conducting its war against Hamas, has changed in a very conspicuous way. Well, it has. You're right. You've heard in the last few days, the vice president, the secretary of state, secretary of defense issuing much sharper warnings to Israel that they have a responsibility to avoid civilian casualties. And not just they have a responsibility, but they aren't living up to that responsibility.

It's a much different emphasis. And it represents, I think, the frustrations about how the Israelis have been conducting the war, that there's just too many civilian casualties. There's too much bloodshed. And that these images are hurting both Israel and the United States around the world. These are not people who are responsible for the October 7th attack, but are paying the price for it. And that's something that the United States, that the Biden administration is increasingly upset about, that this is not good on the ground and it's not good around the world. Right. And that change in tone really stands out because it is so profoundly different from the way that this president and this White House and administration

talked about this war at the very start in the days after the October 7th attacks inside of Israel. And that's where I really want to start with you, kind of understanding the president's journey from there to here. So just kind of take us back to the beginning. Well, at the beginning, of course, on October 7th, President Biden was staunchly in Israel's corner. Good afternoon. Today, the people of Israel are under attack. He came out in the beginning and said, the United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back. You know, I am with Israel. And not only that, he just understood and viscerally expressed the trauma and the outrage and the pain that Israelis were feeling.

Innocent people murdered, wounded, entire families taken hostage by Hamas. Entire families taken hostage by Hamas. And he was just reciting one atrocity after another. It was not an antiseptic description of what had happened. It was a very personal view on his part. And Jill and I are praying for those families who have been impacted by this violence. We grieve with those who have lost their loved ones, lost a piece of their soul. And within a few days, he jumps on the plane, jumps on Air Force One. I was actually with him on that plane during that trip to fly all the way across the world to

Israel. Mr. Prime Minister, I'm very happy to be back in Israel with you. Why is he going that far? He's going there to give them a hug, almost in a literal sense. He literally hugs Bibi Netanyahu on the tarmac. I want to say to the people of Israel, their courage, their commitment, their bravery is stunning. And he hugs the Israeli people and he says, I'm with you. This is Joe Biden at his empathetic best. It's also Joe Biden at his most pro-Israel, which, of course, is a different point of view than a lot of Democrats have these days.

Well, let's talk about that. I mean, on some level, the president being supportive of Israel after a terror attack isn't all that surprising, given the United States' historic alliance with the country. But as you're hinting at, it felt for Biden personal on a level. And you could hear that in his speeches and in these literal and figurative hugs. Where does that come from? Where does that come from? Well, first of all, you have to remember that Joe Biden is of a different generation than most Americans and most of his fellow Democrats. He is of the generation where people talked about the Holocaust at the dining room table. His father talked to him about

America's failure to do more to stop the Holocaust early on and how that was shameful of the world, allowed that to happen. This is something that Joe Biden grew up with. And when he gets to the Senate, he often told the story and he tells it now almost every day. I told the story before and I'll tell it again of my first meeting with an Israeli prime minister 50 years ago as a young senator. About going to Israel in 1973. Just before the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He means gold of my year and how she's the famous prime minister of Israel. Without her looking at me, she said to me, knowing I'd hear her,

why do you look so worried, Senator Biden? And I said, worried? Like, of course I'm worried. When he says he's worried about the Jewish people, she tells him, Don't worry, Senator. We Israelis have a secret weapon. We have nowhere else to go. Don't worry about us. We have nowhere else to go. And he takes a lot of meaning from that. So he's been talking about this for a long time. Right. In fact, he recites that story about Golda Meir during his recent trip to Israel as if to say, I come here as somebody with a lot of personal connection and rapport with this country. I'm not a newcomer.

Absolutely. You know, he has said, and he said that on that trip, you don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist, right? That's quite a statement to make. Obviously, Joe Biden is not Jewish, but he expresses, you know, a real connection to the Israeli project. And it's a way you don't hear from more modern Democrats. It's not something you hear from younger members of the party. This is something born of his time, and he has not changed in that way. He is a big supporter of Israel going back from the beginning, and that's come to this moment. But I caution this while you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it.

But in that same speech, he also issues his caution. After 9-11, we were in rage in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes. He says, I understand your rage. I understand your feelings. We had the same thing at 9-11, but don't make the mistake that we made after 9-11. I made wartime decisions.

I know the choices are never clear or easy for the leadership. There's always cost. It requires being deliberate. It requires asking very hard questions. And what he's saying, in effect, is don't go too far, right? That you will lose the world. Right now, you have the world's sympathy. If you respond with excess, if you respond too aggressively,

then you will lose that. And he's clearly referring to the Iraq War. He doesn't say that in the speech, but that's clearly the inference. And remember, he had voted for that as a senator and came to regret it. Right. And it felt like he was anticipating that Israel might react in a way that required such a warning. It didn't feel like a warning issue just for the sake of a warning. It felt like Biden was saying, I know you're about to respond with extraordinary force. Yeah, it didn't come out of the blue. Everybody understands Israel's history. The history of Israel is to respond

with overpowering force. It's their doctrine. Their doctrine is we will, you come after us, we will come after you 10 times as hard. And the reason, of course, is to establish a sense of deterrence so that people don't do it again. And Biden knew this, but he also knew that that overwhelming force had a cost, and the cost would be on the ground in terms of civilian lives, and the cost would be internationally in terms of Israel's position in the world. Right. And in fact, even at that point where Biden is issuing this warning, Israel has already started a pretty major bombardment of airstrikes in Gaza. So, I'm curious how Biden starts to marry this public support of Israel with a kind of enforcement of this warning he's issued. How

does he start to ensure that Israel is going to heed his admonition not to, in a sense, overreact. Well, part of the effect of his hug of Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli government is to build up the credibility to then say, I'm on your side. You know how much I'm on your side, so here's my private advice about how you go about doing it. And my private advice is be careful. And in Israel, they actually call it the bear hug. And by the bear hug in Hebrew, bear hug isn't just a hug of affections, a hug of I'm controlling you a little bit, right? And that's how they see Biden. That's the strategy that he's applying here. No daylight in public, but listen to me behind the scenes because you know I have your back and

I'm the only guy who has your back like this. And so he begins to apply pressure, right? He begins to say, you know, are you really sure you begins to apply pressure, right? He begins to say, you know, are you really sure you want to do it this way? He doesn't do questions, by the way, at first. He does sort of a Socratic thing. Is this really the way you've done it? What have you thought through about the next day? What about this? What about that? And in doing so, of course, telling them how he thinks they should go forward. So these are conversations that the president is having, conversations, it sounds like, that are filled with Socratic questions, I assume with the prime minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu.

Yes. In fact, they're talking like all the time, especially at first. I mean, I think they've talked more than a dozen times in the first six, seven weeks of this crisis. And it's not just him. He is sending one administration official after another to Israel to basically hold their hands. I mean, it's almost like there's never a moment when there isn't a senior administration official on the ground there, the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, a senior general, the CIA director, whatever.

And the idea seems to be we are with you, but we are literally going to be in the room here. Right, looking over your shoulder in a sense. They want to be in the room, not just hearing about things afterwards. Well, talk about some of the moments and some of the strategies where we can understand specific attempts by the United States to shape Israel's response during this conflict. The first and most important priority for the Biden team is to keep

the war from expanding beyond Gaza to other parts of the region. That's the thing that President Biden fears the most in those early days. And in those early days, there was real uncertainty about how this could blow up. There was Hezbollah in southern Lebanon tossing rockets across the border at the Israelis. The Israelis, there's some sentiment in Israel to go ahead and go after them as well. That really launched a new war against southern Lebanon and Hezbollah. They have 100,000-some rockets aimed at them there. And the Biden team doesn't want that. They do not want to widen this war.

And what Biden does is he says, look, you worry about Hamas. I'll take care of Hezbollah because I'm going to send two carriers groups to the region. And they will see that if they get involved in this war in a big way, they're going to have to answer to us, to the United States. And that basically talks the Israelis out of expanding and escalating this war beyond Gaza. That's the number one most important priority for Biden coming in. Right. That strategy from the U.S. seems to have largely been effective. It hasn't expanded into a regional conflict. Right. Okay. Where else do we see the U.S. pressure? Well, another place where we see it is how Israel delays the beginning of the ground war, right? It doesn't go immediately over the border into Gaza as much as I think there

is a desire to do that. Biden says, wait a second, before you do it, think it through. What are you going to do here? What are you going to do about civilians? What are you going to do, you know, the day after? And so instead of just jumping right into a ground war, Israel warns civilians to get out of the way. It begins telling them, head to the south, and that's where you'll be safe. It isn't adequate as far as a lot of their critics go. It isn't adequate as far as a lot of human rights groups would tell you, but it's something that Biden, I think, pushes them into doing, and he affects their game plan from the start. So when we think about that moment when Israel is massing troops on the border and is about, it very much seems, to invade Gaza,

but instead delays it and starts issuing these massive evacuation orders of Gaza civilians from the north to the south, you're saying behind the scenes, President Biden, the administration, is very much playing a huge role in why that happens. Right, very much. They're not dictating. They understand that dictating is not a good idea with the Israelis, not gonna take it well, but they're just really pushing on the consequences if they don't do it this way. Now, if you do it, we can tell you how this goes, they say.

We were in Fallujah, we were in Mosul, and we can give you advice. They send, in fact, a general who was in Iraq to tell the Israelis about their American experiences doing this kind of, you know, really tough urban warfare to give them a sense of what they have ahead of them and to make sure that they have thought it through enough before they get started. Right. They're also, of course, pushing Israel on humanitarian aid. And this is a tough moment. Israel says at first they're going to

blockade Gaza and not allow any food, water, fuel into the enclave. And the Americans are saying, no, no, that's unacceptable. That's too far. You cannot do that. And they're fighting with the Israelis, in effect, over getting more humanitarian, getting any humanitarian aid in. And eventually they start to get some in, not nearly enough according to the groups. They begin to get trucks through the Rafah crossing, and you begin to see some led up by the Israelis on this grudgingly and unhappily because they worry that any supplies helps Hamas, not necessarily the civilians. But eventually, the Biden team pushes them into allowing more humanitarian aid.

Right. But there's a limit to how far the Biden administration is able to influence things. I mean, just look at the airstrikes. They're so overwhelming, so powerful, right? Even if you don't credit the exact numbers issued by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, clearly there are thousands and thousands of civilians who have died here because of these airstrikes. So how surgical are they really? I think the Americans would have preferred a more surgical approach that would hit Hamas and destroy that group without hitting so many civilians. But it's hard to say how you do that, right? Because Hamas is so integrated into the community, and distinguishing between the two obviously has been hard. But the Americans have been very

frustrated, I think, behind the scenes at how heavy the toll has been among the civilian casualties of those airstrikes. Right. This has got to be the single biggest source of American frustration. The fact that Israel's aerial bombardment especially has produced such staggeringly high levels of civilian deaths in Gaza. At this point, the health ministry in Gaza puts that number at well over 15,000, which includes combatants and civilians, thousands of which are children. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a concern for the Biden team, not just because of the obvious emotion of watching people who didn't have anything to do with the attack of October 7th pay a price for it, but also because they know that internationally it costs Israel support and domestically here as well, right? It's cost Biden's support among his fellow Democrats

who are watching what's happening in Gaza with great concern, great upset, sometimes great outrage, and their outrage at Biden for not doing more to rein in the Israelis. So he's under a great deal of pressure from all sides. Right. I mean, another friction point, a really important friction point is what happens the day after, right? When Hamas is destroyed, for what have you, when Israel is done with its war, at least the main part of the war, what comes next? How do you govern Gaza? You can't allow Hamas to be in charge anymore, but who then takes over? And there's a real difference of opinion between Washington and Jerusalem about this. You know, President Biden's been pretty straightforward, even in public, saying, do not reoccupy Gaza. That's not a good idea. And he wants to see the Palestinian Authority,

which governs, at least in part, the West Bank, take over Gaza in some sort of revitalized version, he says. And that's not where Bibi Netanyahu and most Israeli government officials are. They don't trust the Palestinian Authority. They don't think much of it. And they don't like the idea of anybody else being in charge. Bibi Netanyahu said in public, I don't think there's anybody other than the IDF who can be in charge in Gaza when the war part of this is over. So there are real loggerheads over that. Right. I mean, that is a moment where Netanyahu openly defies President Biden's wishes here because he goes on TV, and I think he's now done it twice, and said Israel will play a major role in the security of Gaza, which to many sounds a lot like Israel will

control Gaza. And to some, it sounds like Israel will occupy Gaza. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's not clear that necessarily means occupation because you have heard Israelis say, we don't want to get back in the way we used to. They pulled out, of course, in 2005, but they plan to control it. What does that mean, control it? We don't know whether it might be some kind of forced relocation. That's something the Biden administration has made very clear they're against. So there's a real friction point there, and that's going to come to a head at some point. So the question of day after is another way in which Biden has realized the limitations of his influence over this conflict. Right, exactly.

But that's a long-term issue. In the short term, there's so many others on the table, including, for instance, the hostage is really an important priority for the president. And he does manage to convince Bibi Netanyahu to pause the fighting in order to have an exchange in effect with Hamas. This is an important deal that he brokers. It takes weeks. He appoints a secret cell of negotiators working with Qatar, the Gulf Emirate, which is friendly with both Hamas and the United

States. The president himself is getting on the phone with Netanyahu and with the emir of Qatar to break the last kind of obstacles to this. And they do have a deal. They do pause the fighting for basically a week or so in order to release some of the hostages. About 110 hostages get out, mainly women and children. But there's still another 100 or so in captivity, including a number of Americans.

And at some point, this hostage deal breaks down. Hamas refuses to put more women on the list. And to the extent that the Americans had hoped this pause in fighting would give them some breathing room to allow more humanitarian aid in and to maybe shape the next phase of the combat, maybe even to see if the combat might not have to resume quite at the same level, that's the test for the Biden strategy here. I recall understanding from coverage that you wrote, Peter, during this period, that the United States saw the ceasefire, the pause in fighting during the hostage deal,

as a chance to reshape the war. And that was the hope. And then the resumption occurs, and my strong sense is that they don't quite feel that that is what happens. No, in fact, they specifically say, don't go into southern Gaza, where you have told everybody to go flee for their safety, and then start indiscriminately bombing again. And they push the Israelis to say, you need to do more tactical, more targeted kind of strikes, be more surgical about what you do. And the Israelis basically, they take some of this to heart. They do, you know, issue some maps saying here are some safe places for civilians to go. But otherwise, they basically go into the south in full force. And the war suddenly paused for a number of days and giving everybody kind of a chance to catch their breath is back on full bore.

And suddenly we're back where we were before the hostage exchange. And this is an important pivot point. That's when you begin to see senior administration officials almost like in a chorus begin in public to really ratchet up the pressure on Israel. They need to stop doing things the way they were doing them, you're hearing them say. You heard Secretary of State Tony Blinken say they can't do in the South what they did in the North. We need to have a different way of approaching it. You hear Lloyd Austin saying, look, if you go after the Palestinian civilians, all you're doing is radicalizing them and creating a whole new generation of enemies. And this is a very different tone than you heard from the Biden administration for the first seven, eight weeks. Right. Suddenly, the public rhetoric from the Biden administration is starting to,

it seems more accurately, reflect the private pressure that the president has been putting on Israel. Exactly. And the assumption is that's because has been putting on Israel. Exactly. And the assumption is that's because the Israelis aren't listening to the private messaging anymore. And so by taking it public, you are reinforcing your point and pushing them even harder. We'll be right back. The week-long truce between Israel and Hamas is over. Israel says it has resumed combat operations and says Hamas, quote, violated the operational pause and, in addition, fired toward Israeli territory. The new Israeli airstrikes raining down on Gaza overnight after the temporary ceasefire collapsed.

The death toll climbing in Gaza. Israel pounded the south of Gaza today, the same region they had told Palestinians in the north to evacuate to. The Israeli army says it's engaged in the heaviest fighting since it began its ground invasion five weeks ago. About 170,000 people in Khan Yunis have been warned to leave for safety. But a spokesman for the UN children's charity UNICEF says there's nowhere safe for people to go.

So Peter, the post-hostage deal, post-ceasefire Israeli assault of southern Gaza clearly has not so far seemed to conform to the wishes of the American government. And that makes me want to understand, if President Biden wanted to pressure Israel much further on issues like reducing civilian deaths, what tools does the president and his administration have at their disposal to really do that? Beyond Socratic questions and evening phone calls with Netanyahu saying, I'd like you to do this a little bit differently, and beyond the public statements that Biden's deputies are now making, how much further could Biden go? Well, I mean, the administration, the Americans have extraordinary influence tools that they want to use them. First of all, of course, the United States is the main supplier for Israel's

military operation at this point. They need American interceptors for their anti-missile batteries. They need American ammunition. They need American arms. And I think that that is a huge instrument if the Biden administration wanted to use it. Now, they're not using it in a public way. There is some suggestion as to maybe quietly whether they're holding back or delaying certain shipments. But publicly, they are not conditioning arms supplies with any kind of demands about how the war be conducted. But you're hearing Democrats say that in Congress who are talking about this $14 billion that President Biden has asked for for additional aid.

A lot of Democrats are saying, well, why don't we attach conditions to that, very explicit conditions about how they conduct the war? And so far, the Biden administration hasn't ruled that out, but hasn't gone along with it either. I mean, what this makes clear is that Biden does have meaningful leverage over Israel in this conflict if he wants to use it. And I think what this seems to reveal is a bit of a paradox at the center of what the Biden administration is up to in this war.

It says it wants to support Israel in its objective of defeating Hamas and increasingly makes clear it wants to limit civilian deaths. But it's not willing to do anything to lower civilian deaths that might jeopardize Israel's objective in defeating Hamas. And therefore, civilian deaths are going to keep growing. So basically, these two stated U.S. goals just do not seem compatible at the moment.

Well, they're definitely in conflict. They do not want to undermine Israel, obviously. They are very straightforwardly on Israel's side here, but they are very concerned that the civilian casualties are excessive and that they don't want to cost Israel's standing in the world. They are the one country that stands by Israel time and time again when the rest of the world is condemning them. They're the ones that block Security Council resolutions of the United Nations that are blasting Israel. They're the ones who supply them the arms. So, you know, the United States has such a unique relationship with

Israel. It is both a partner and in some way as a mentor. So it's a symbiotic relationship in that way. This is why Biden can, in fact, do what he has done to influence things, but he does not want to go so far as to seem to undercut them. And it's a balancing act that some people would say, you know, would argue about whether he's been successful at, but that's the treacherous territory he's in. I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying, because it feels important. Biden feels confident that a relationship in which he's at the table having these calls with Netanyahu and able to apply private pressure, even when it's not all that effective, is a better scenario than one in which he, through pressure, perhaps too much pressure in the eyes of Israel, alienates it and has no influence over the way it conducts this war. That's the calculation.

Yes, exactly right. If you talk to administration officials, what you hear them say is if we didn't support them, they would do this anyway. They wouldn't be moderating in any fashion. They would find other ways. They have their own weapons. They would go to other places to get weapons if they had to. They would do whatever was necessary. So from Biden's point of view, rightly or wrongly, it's better to be at the table and be able to have some influence than to be on the outside without any. But is there a point, Peter, based on your reporting on this president and your larger reporting

on the history of America's relationship with Israel and the world, where this conflict we're talking about and the calculations that Biden is making, they just might change, where he might decide that the civilian deaths are so great and popular opinion of the war becomes so dim

that he would take this harder-edged approach, even if it means challenging Israel's objective of destroying Hamas, and even if it means in some way jeopardizing America's relationship with Israel and its ability to influence it. Yeah, I think that's right. I talked to an analyst the other day. He says, look, he thinks there's four to six weeks left in this policy. At a certain point, this becomes just too big a burden for the United States to handle if it doesn't change on the ground. Eventually, the pressure on Biden to do more to intervene will grow so large, both domestically and internationally, that he will have to change course. And he will have to be much more aggressive in trying to pull back on the Israeli offensive. And that's why you hear, you know, Tony Blinken said, weeks, not months, in terms of how far

this offensive should go. And in private, I've been hearing lately some Israeli officials saying, look, yes, yes, weeks, not months. And they're trying to get in, I think, under the wire here. They also see a short window here in which they have to operate before the pressure on Biden grows so tense that he has to be more aggressive in his intervention. Peter, I'm curious if that four to six weeks becomes influenced by something like what we're seeing Israel do over the past 24 hours, which is to say we are being more successful in killing Hamas fighters and leaders than perhaps the world realizes. Netanyahu coming out and saying, we've killed half of Hamas's battalion commanders.

Is that an effort by Israel to say, no, no, no, give us more time because this is actually working? And does the U.S. agree with that? Does the U.S. think it's working? Yeah, I mean, this is the problem, right? What is the metric for success here? What does it mean to destroy Hamas? It's not a numbers game. You can't sit there and say, okay, we've now killed X thousand Hamas fighters or militants or terrorists, and therefore we're good to go.

But I think what you're hearing when you hear the Israelis say we've killed this many battalion commanders and this many leaders is a way for them to eventually declare that they have been successful and allow them perhaps at some point in those next four to six weeks to say, okay, we are done with this phase of the operation. It doesn't mean they're going to stop all military action, by the way, but at some point they seem to be laying the groundwork

to begin phasing back and to say we did accomplish what we wanted because you're never going to get every single person who is a Hamas member or supporter. So they need to find some way to begin to say this is working. From what you're saying, it's very clear that the U.S. would like Israel to start to wrap up the most intense phase of this war. But the one person who's not forcefully signaling this view from the U.S. publicly is President Biden himself. And I'm curious why Biden seems reluctant to do that if it's clearly now the policy of his administration. Yeah, it's fascinating to watch, actually.

In the same week you've heard the vice president and secretary of defense and secretary of state say such strong things. The president himself, first of all, hasn't given a lot of formal remarks, but where he has addressed this at, say, some campaign fundraisers, he has emphasized again and again how much he supports Israel. And he's not repeated some of the same things that his own top administration officials have said. Now, why is that? You know, it could be a good cop, bad cop diplomacy thing. I'm still the one who's on your side. But it's both strategy and I think, you know, his own personality and his own feelings about Israel. He says that October 7th attack was the worst, most deadliest day for Jews in the world since the Holocaust. And he does not want to repeat what his father told him were the mistakes of the outside world in the 1930s. And so he's allowing his staff to do it.

He's allowing his top officials to do it. They're not freelancing, but that's not where he's going to be personally applying the pressure at this point. And if your strategy is at some point that there is a limit to this, weeks, not months, then perhaps it makes sense from their point of view to hold back the president because he can still come in later and increase that pressure. And they understand that there's a difference when the president himself says it than when the people around him say it. So in the end, Biden's decision to stay personally on the side of Israel and not embody his administration's ambivalence in this moment is strategic. It's keeping his powder dry so that when he does deliver that message publicly, it has all the more power.

But you're saying at the end of the day, it's a reflection of the reality that he's personally inclined to support Israel in this offensive against Hamas because of his deeply felt views about Israel and what it means, what it represents. I think that's exactly right. Strategic and personal. These two things are married in Joe Biden at the moment. That could change and we'll see whether it does or not. But for him right now, he does not want to be the person out there banging away on the Israelis, even though he is, of course, privately very concerned about the way they're conducting this operation. Well, Peter, thank you very much.

We appreciate it. Thank you. On Thursday, as Israel pushed civilians in southern Gaza into ever smaller pockets of land, the Israeli military offered what it said was evidence that Hamas militants were firing rockets from humanitarian safe zones in the area. Such safe zones were created at the urging of the U.S. to protect Palestinian civilians, raising the possibility that Hamas is now using them as a base of operations, and that Israel might treat them as a military target.

But as of Thursday night, the Times could not immediately verify Israel's claims, and Hamas did not respond to the allegations. to the allegations. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, a Texas judge granted a request to allow an abortion despite the state's strict ban on the procedure. The case involves a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition. condition. It is believed to be among the first successful attempts in the nation to seek a court-approved abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year and allowed states like Texas to ban abortions. Although the ruling applies to a single pregnant woman, it is part of a larger legal effort by abortion rights advocates to ensure that even states that ban abortion still allow for medical exceptions.

Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan, Olivia Nat, Summer Tamad, and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Paige Cowett, contains original music by Dan Powell and Romy Niemisto, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lindsay Garrison, Claire Tennisgetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Mark George, Luke VanderVlug, MJ Davis-Lynn, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoit, Liz O'Balin, Thank you. Special thanks to That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.