After days of declining to call for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, U.S. President Joe Biden reversed course. Whether it makes a difference on the battlefield is another matter.
Biden’s decision to show "support for a cease-fire” in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday signaled that the U.S. was looking for more public ways to stop the fighting. But his statement — expressing support for a halt to the deadly warfare but not demanding one outright — showed the limits of U.S. power and Biden’s wariness of applying too much public pressure on Israel.
The role of Hamas — the Palestinian Authority rival that runs Gaza and is labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and others — makes it impossible for the U.S. to bring the two sides together. And after four years of being shunned by former President Donald Trump, Palestinians are wary of any U.S. offers to play the role of middleman.