Driving in to work this morning, I listened to the latest episode of the NYT The Daily podcast, “The Voters Willing to Abandon Biden Over Gaza.” It focused on organizers trying to get people voting in Michigan’s Democratic primary to select “uncommitted” as a signal to the President that his support of Israel in what they call a “genocide” against Palestinians is unacceptable.
It was frustratingly anecdotal, focusing especially on one woman, an elderly Palestinian woman married to a Jew who has lived here for decades and worked in Democratic campaigns going back at least as far as 1992. And, indeed, focused on Michigan in particular because it has an unusually large Muslim and Arab population. The thought was that, if they were to mostly sit it out, Trump could very well win the state that he narrowly lost to Biden in 2020 and actually won in 2016.
The fact that Trump is markedly worse on Palestinian and Muslim issues from the perspective of these activists was acknowledged. But they just didn’t care: they can’t support him.
Which, I guess, is fine. People have a right to be single-issue voters if they want to.
I listened to this after having scanned the news earlier, including reports like this the AP‘s “Israel is ready to pause its war in Gaza during Ramadan if a hostage deal is reached, Biden says.”
Israel would be willing to pause its war on Hamas in Gaza during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan if a deal is reached to release some of the hostages held by the militants, U.S. President Joe Biden said.
Negotiators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been working to broker a cease-fire deal that would see Hamas free some of the dozens of hostages it holds in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and a six-week halt in fighting. During the pause, talks would continue over the release of the remaining hostages and additional Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Israeli officials said Biden’s comments on a late-night talk show filmed Monday came as a surprise and were not made in coordination with the country’s leadership. A Hamas official played down any sense of progress, saying the group wouldn’t soften its demands.
Negotiations were still underway Tuesday in Qatar. A senior official from Egypt has said the draft deal includes the release of up to 40 women and older hostages in return for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners — mostly women, minors and older people.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the proposed six-week pause in fighting would allow hundreds of trucks to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza every day, including to the hard-hit north.
The start of Ramadan, which is expected to be around March 10, is seen as an unofficial deadline for a cease-fire deal. The month is a time of heightened religious observance and dawn-to-dusk fasting for hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world. Israeli-Palestinian tensions have flared in the past during the holy month.
“Ramadan’s coming up and there has been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out,” Biden said in an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”
In separate comments Monday, Biden said that he hoped a cease-fire deal could take effect by next week.
At the same time, Biden did not call for an end to the war, which was triggered by the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, when militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted roughly 250 people, according to Israeli authorities.
The Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media, said Israel wants a deal immediately, but that Hamas continues to push excessive demands. They also said that Israel is insisting that female soldiers be part of the first group of hostages released under any truce deal.
Hamas official Ahmad Abdel-Hadi indicated that optimism on a deal was premature.
“The resistance is not interested in giving up any of its demands, and what is proposed does not meet what it had requested,” he told the Pan-Arab TV channel Al Mayadeen.
Hamas has previously demanded that Israel end the war as part of any deal, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “delusional.”
Biden, who has shown staunch support for Israel throughout the war, left open the door in his remarks for an eventual Israeli ground offensive in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, on the border with Egypt, where more than half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people have fled under Israeli evacuation orders.
The prospect of an invasion of Rafah has prompted global alarm over the fate of civilians trapped there. Netanyahu has said a ground operation in Rafah is an inevitable component of Israel’s strategy for crushing Hamas. This week, the military submitted for Cabinet approval operational plans for the offensive, as well as evacuation plans for civilians there.
The degree to which Biden has influence over Netanyahu is unclear, but I strongly suspect that it’s marginal. Israel has a coalition government running the war effort and there’s not much demand for moderation. And, while I’m sure they’d like to get more hostages back, it’s not obvious why they would agree to give Hamas a long respite in exchange for them.
American public opinion is hard to read.
Here’s a Gallup poll released in early January, the latest on their site:
Only a tiny number of Democrats thought we were doing “too much” and 40 percent thought we were doing “not enough.” This would seem a pretty good indicator that Biden’s policy is popular.
Framed slightly differently, though—in terms of Israel’s actions—we see radically different numbers in an AP-NORC poll taken the month before and the month after:
Here, we see something of a flip. Clearly, Democrats are more anti-Israel than either Independents or Republicans. But all three groups are slowly turning against Israel, with only Republicans majority favorable.
