Biden Admin: Continued Fighting Against Hamas in Gaza ‘Makes Israel Weaker’

U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a press briefing on Monday that the Biden administration believes “continued military action in Gaza just makes Israel weaker.”

Miller laid out an argument that Israel has essentially checkmated itself on every front by refusing to take the administration’s advice and strike a ceasefire deal with the terrorists of Hamas.

Miller said continued military action would be “a recipe for continued conflict, continued instability, and continued insecurity for Israel,” as well as “extremely harmful to the people of Gaza.”

“We think continued military action in Gaza just makes Israel weaker. It makes it harder to achieve a resolution in the north. It adds to instability in the West Bank. It makes it harder for Israel to normalize relations with its neighbors,” he said.

Miller credited the Israelis with growing “somewhat more focused” on the aftermath of the war. He said the Biden administration wants them to “engage seriously with Arab countries in the region about it, because we do think there are ways to rebuild Gaza, to provide security for Gaza, to provide Palestinian-led governance in Gaza that ultimately will not just realize the aspirations of the Palestinian people but will strengthen Israel’s security.”

Miller was responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comment on Monday that major ground operations in the Hamas holdout city of Rafah would soon begin winding down, but “that doesn’t mean the war is about to end.”

“The intense phase of the fighting against Hamas is about to end. It doesn’t mean that the war is about to end, but the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah,” Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 14 News in his first interview since the war began.

Netanyahu said Israeli forces would “continue mowing the grass all the time” and will “not give up” until they achieve “the goal of destroying Hamas.”

In his Channel 14 interview, and in remarks to the Israeli parliament on Monday, Netanyahu said he was still open to a “partial deal” that would free all of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas.

The terrorist organization has demanded a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza before it will release any more hostages. One hundred and sixteen Israelis are still unaccounted for after the savage Hamas attack on October 7 — 41 of them are presumed dead.

The Biden administration has lost a string of public relations battles with Netanyahu, but it may see signs that it is about to win the war — and not a moment too soon, as Biden is caught between supporting America’s longstanding ally Israel after it suffered a terrorist attack of unimaginable brutality and a growing segment of Biden’s Democrat Party that believes the Israeli response is far more of a crime against humanity than anything Hamas did.

Watch: Biden Backtracks on Criticism of Netanyahu

On Monday, a national commission of inquiry warned Netanyahu and four former defense officials that they could be targets of a two-year-old investigation into improper submarine and surface vessel procurements from German shipbuilding company ThyssenKrupp. 

The “submarine affair,” as it is known, includes allegations that bribes were paid to alter some of Israel’s purchasing decisions. Netanyahu previously treated the probe as a politically motivated annoyance, but last week, some evidence surfaced that he might have a personal financial connection to ThyssenKrupp through another company called SeaDrift Coke. State prosecutors appear to be weighing whether or not they have enough material to include Netanyahu in a criminal probe.

Netanyahu’s supporters argue that his real “sin” in the submarine affair was attempting to boost the Israeli navy, which has been traditionally overlooked in favor of the Air Force by the military brass. Netanyahu insisted on Monday that developing a stronger submarine fleet was essential for “ensuring [Israel’s] existence against Iran, which is trying to destroy us.”

“History will prove that Prime Minister Netanyahu was right on this issue as well and made the right decisions for the security of Israel,” said a statement from his office.

On Tuesday, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men, a ruling that could drive key Orthodox political parties away from Netanyahu’s governing coalition. If Netanyahu’s coalition falls apart and his government comes down, he may not be popular enough to put it back together again, even though Israelis still largely support the war in Gaza.

The Biden administration and Netanyahu seem to be circling each other warily, the former trying to get a feel for how hard it can push for a ceasefire as the Israeli prime minister’s position weakens, the latter trying to determine just how firmly he can say “no.”