President Joe Biden declined to categorically write off the idea of putting conditions on U.S. aid to Israel in a Friday news conference about the Israel-Hamas cease-fire and release of hostages held by the Palestinian militant group.
A reporter asked the president his response to calls from some Democrats, who “would like to see a reduction” in Israel’s bombing of Gaza, asking that the U.S. place conditions on its aid to Israel.
“I think that’s a worthwhile thought, but I don’t think if I started off with that we would have gotten where we are today,” Biden responded. “We have to take this a piece at a time.”
To be sure, Biden did not endorse stricter conditions on U.S. aid to Israel. Far from it, he is urging Congress to pass a bill, currently tied up in partisan budget disagreements, that would provide Israel with $14 billion in emergency military aid.
But Biden’s refusal to deride the notion of making aid conditional sounded like a notable break with his past rhetoric. As a presidential candidate in 2019, Biden told The Wall Street Journal that leveraging U.S. aid to Israel to curb settlement growth would be “absolutely outrageous.”
Biden might be striking a more moderate tone so as not to appear dismissive of parts of the Democratic base that empathize with the Palestinians. Amid the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the displacement of two-thirds of Gaza’s population, thousands of left-leaning protesters have been engaging in civil disobedience to pressure Democrats to support a cease-fire. And Arab American leaders in electorally critical Michigan are leading an effort to discourage voters from casting a ballot for Biden next year.
The exact significance of Biden’s remarks is not clear, however. He has been known to occasionally make off-the-cuff comments that he or the White House walk back.
“My initial thought is did he fully understand the question?” said Khaled Elgindy, director of Palestinian-Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute. “If so, then it is a sea change in the president’s attitude.”
