Das Problem mit den Verbündeten: Amerika braucht ein Handbuch für schwierige Freunde

[SS from essay by Richard Haass, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Senior Counselor at Centerview Partners, and the author of [*The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/588988/the-bill-of-obligations-by-richard-haass/).]

Immediately after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, U.S. President Joe Biden agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel had the right to defend itself. But in the months that followed, disagreements mounted over how that right was exercised. The Biden administration disapproved of Israel’s at times indiscriminate military campaign in Gaza, its restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid, its failure to stop the construction of new Jewish settlements and settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, and its prioritization of the war on Hamas over negotiations to release hostages. Above all, the administration was frustrated with Israel’s utter failure to put forth a viable strategy for governing Gaza once Hamas is degraded, an omission compounded by its refusal to advance any plan to address the Palestinian desire for self-rule.

Israel receives $3.8 billion annually in U.S. military aid, and the United States has been the country’s most dependable supporter for decades. And yet the United States was remarkably reluctant to publicly confront Israel over [Gaza](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/tags/gaza). Only after more than four months of seeing its private advice mostly rebuffed did the Biden administration openly break with Israel—and even then, it acted at the margins. It placed sanctions on a few extremist settlers, airdropped food into Gaza, built a floating pier on Gaza’s coast to facilitate aid shipments, and went against Israeli preferences on two largely symbolic UN Security Council resolutions. In May, seven months into the war, the administration placed a hold on the delivery of some large U.S.-made bombs to avoid even more civilian casualties. That same month, it threatened to pause the shipment of other military systems if Israel launched a full-scale assault on the city of Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold, although it never followed through because it considered Israel’s attacks on the city as less than all-out. If success is defined as persuading Israel to adopt the course Washington wants, then U.S. policy toward the country since October 7 must be judged a failure.