Biden ‘Doesn’t Know’ How Israel Gaza War Will End

On Oct. 27, three weeks into Israel’s punishing counterattack in Gaza, top Biden officials privately told a small group assembled at the White House what they would not say in public: Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets.

The group — top foreign policy officials from the Biden administration and previous ones — also discussed the apparent lack of an Israeli plan for defeating Hamas despite repeated U.S. prodding, according to three people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private exchange.

“We never had a clear sense that the Israelis had a definable and achievable military objective,” said one of those familiar with the meeting. “From the very beginning, there’s been a sense of us not knowing how the Israelis were going to do what they said they were going to do.”

Publicly, however, the Biden administration was providing Israel unfettered support in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, when Hamas militants murdered 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. On the same day as the private meeting, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the U.S. was imposing no “red lines” on Israel’s military campaign.

Biden’s strategy from the outset rested on a central trade-off: that if he showed Israel unequivocal, even defiant, support early on, he could ultimately influence its conduct of the war. Some administration officials now concede the strategy is heading toward failure, and in private talks, they voice a striking frustration and uncertainty about how the war will end.

On Monday, Biden’s frustration appeared to boil over, as he told Netanyahu in a phone call that it would be disastrous for Israel to surge into Rafah and demanded that Israel send a team to Washington to consult on a better strategy, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.