Next Week's U.S.-Israel Talks Could Get Heated | Opinion

Shortly after President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address, he ran into Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado as he made his way out of the House chamber. The microphones picked up what was meant to be a private conversation about the most sensitive of topics: Biden's relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "I told him, Bibi, and don't repeat this, but you and I are going to have a 'come to Jesus' meeting," the president said.

That "come to Jesus" moment could occur next week, when Netanyahu's most trusted ministers travel to Washington for talks with U.S. officials on what to do about Rafah, the Palestinian city near the border with Egypt, and the last major urban area the Israeli military has yet to comb through for Hamas militants. This sudden meeting was the byproduct of a phone call Biden had with Netanyahu on March 18, in which he yet again pressed Israel to do more on the humanitarian front. With famine in Gaza's north projected to occur sometime this spring, the Biden administration is frantically trying to mitigate food insecurity with periodic airdrops and the building of a temporary pier off Gaza's coast to scale up aid deliveries.

The U.S. and Israel are united on the ultimate objective: degrading Hamas to the point where it can't execute a similar campaign of slaughter like it did on Oct. 7. But the two close partners are at loggerheads over crucial details.

The U.S. would like Israel to take a far more targeted approach to Rafah, which is teeming with refugees previously driven from their homes and serves as the main gateway for whatever humanitarian aid comes into the enclave. In the U.S. view, a large-scale Israeli ground invasion of Rafah would do more harm than good. "Our position is that Hamas should not be allowed a safe haven in Rafah or anywhere else," National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said during a White House briefing this week. "But a major ground operation there would be a mistake. It would lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza, and further isolate Israel internationally." It's hard not to agree with him; with about half of Gaza's total population bottled up in the area and Palestinians still unable to move back to the north, an Israeli offensive in Rafah could be the bloodiest of the war.

Netanyahu insists that no ground invasion will happen until Palestinians are evacuated from Rafah. The U.S., however, hasn't seen a plan from the Israelis, suggesting one of two things: the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) haven't bothered to come up with one, or they have but the plan is unworkable. Regardless, the Israeli government has emphasized that the question isn't whether the IDF will go into Rafah but when. A day after talking with Biden, Netanyahu told the Knesset that he "made it as clear as possible to the president that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there is no way to do this without a ground incursion."

If the U.S. is hoping to use next week's encounter to dissuade Israel from launching an operation entirely, then it's wasting its time. Biden may have his red lines but so does Netanyahu—under no circumstances will Israel avoid taking military action in the southern Gaza Strip. Because the stakes for Israel are higher than they are for the U.S., Netanyahu's red line will likely triumph over Biden's. One also needs to take political considerations into account. Biden will survive regardless of what the Israelis choose to do in Rafah. You can't make the same assumption for Netanyahu. He's administering the most ultranationalist coalition government in Israel's history and may conclude that catering to Washington's wishes on the matter would get him into trouble with his partners—some of whom represent a hard-right constituency that daydreams about a day when Jewish settlements in Gaza can be rebuilt.

The U.S. will instead try to promote alternatives to a full-fledged invasion of the city, which now houses more than 1 million Palestinians. According to anonymous U.S. officials, those alternatives include focusing more on the Philadelphi Corridor that divides Gaza with Egypt in an attempt to shut down the smuggling routes Hamas has used to re-stock their weaponry. The Israelis, of course, are well aware of the smuggling tunnels, so this proposal wouldn't come as news. Yet the Israelis are likely to view it as a supplement to an offensive, not as a replacement for one.

The Biden administration will also try to delay an offensive for as long as possible. The reason for this is straightforward: the longer the Israelis delay, the more time the U.S., Europe, the United Nations and international partners will have to flood the zone with humanitarian aid and prepare infrastructure for another exodus of Palestinian civilians. That's good in theory, but difficult to implement in practice. Even if Israel agrees to delay going into Rafah, it won't put handcuffs on itself by declaring a unilateral ceasefire against Hamas, particularly when ongoing truce and hostage negotiations remain active.

The conversation next week could get awkward and heated. But it's a conversation the U.S. and Israel need to have.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.