President Biden’s decision to drop out of the election has freed up time to focus on securing a legacy-making cease-fire in the Middle East and a deal to return hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
But it’s unclear if his new status as a lame-duck president will strip away his leverage over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders, who know a new president will enter the White House in six months, or strengthen Biden’s hand by freeing him from the political calculations of the campaign trail.
“It’s a double-edged sword. The clout has been diminished but it’s also enhanced in that there’s no reelection issues that swirl up — so he’s a free-er agent,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“But will he be less listened to because of that? So, I’m not sure Netanyahu will take anything that comes from him.”
Parties to the complex Middle East negotiations, including the Palestinians and Arab partners, will also want to know that whatever guarantees America makes under Biden will not be torn up should former President Trump win in November.
Biden, in remarks addressing his decision to not seek reelection, said he is going to “keep working to end the war in Gaza, bring home all the hostages, and bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war.”
Of the 115 hostages still held by Hamas, eight are Americans. It’s not fully known the number of those alive or dead, but Hamas holds back the bodies of hostages as leverage in negotiations.
The U.S. is leading intensive efforts to bridge gaps between Israel and Hamas on a cease-fire deal and hostage release. The talks are expected to bear fruit over the coming week, a senior administration official told reporters earlier this week.
Netanyahu, who is widely seen as preferring Trump in the White House, has been accused of slow-walking cease-fire negotiations to preserve his position as prime minister. Far-right members of his party, opposed to a deal with Hamas, have threatened to collapse his government if a deal is signed.
But the White House said it does not view Netanyahu as an obstacle.
“If I'm talking to you a month from now, and we're still kind of where we are now, I might draw a different conclusion,” the official said when asked if Netanyahu is delaying negotiations. “But that's certainly not the case now.”
Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pointed out the biggest question mark in achieving a cease-fire deal is the mindset of Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack believed to be hiding out from Israeli forces in an underground tunnel system in Gaza.
While the CIA reportedly assessed that Sinwar is under pressure from his own military commanders in Gaza to agree to a cease-fire deal, al-Omari — who served as a senior Palestinian negotiator with the Clinton administration — described these reports as speculative.
“Without the hostages he becomes very, very personally vulnerable,” he said. “This is the one card that Hamas has, and I suspect they’ll be very reluctant to do it, and I’m not sure he’s susceptible to the kind of pressure from Qataris, Egyptians or the Hamas leadership in the diaspora — he’s holed up in some tunnel, his calculations are very, very hard to divine.”
But there’s still a belief that America wields unique power. Aviva Siegel, who was held hostage by Hamas for 51 days, said her husband Keith initially held back from Hamas that he holds American citizenship, believing he would be separated from his wife and released earlier.
The first hostages Hamas released in October were two American citizens, part of a proof-of-concept for a broader hostage release that took place at the end of November. Aviva Siegel was released as part of that deal, which included civilian women, minors and citizens of other countries.
“We need Biden to rule the world, not the terrorists to rule the world, and to be strong enough to get them out,” Siegel told a roundtable of House lawmakers this week.
Biden has the benefit of there being virtually no daylight on policy with Vice President Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, and that even Trump is calling for the immediate release of the hostages and for Israel’s war to end.
“They are getting decimated with this publicity,” Trump said of Israel in an interview with Fox News on Thursday ahead of his own meeting with Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“I’d make sure that it gets over with fast; you have to end this fast,” Trump said when asked what he’d do differently. “It can’t continue to go on like this. It's too long, it's too much, you have to get the hostages back.”
There is historical precedent for lame-duck presidents to achieve consequential policies related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Al-Omari pointed to then-President Reagan’s establishing dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the final months of his presidency — despite federal law banning such communication — which continued for a time in the George H.W. Bush administration.
And while President George W. Bush rejected President Clinton’s parameters for Israeli-Palestinian peace laid out in December 2000, al-Omari said the document served as terms of reference for peace talks going forward and paved the way for U.S. policy calling for a two-state solution.
But the reality on the ground now is vastly different from the early 2000s and the Obama administration.
Biden has laid out an ambitious multilayer plan for Middle East peace that begins with a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, eventually leading to ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia — building on the Trump administration's brokering of the Abraham Accords establishing ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
But Netanyahu's rejection of a Palestinian state, a position shared by many in his government, is a major obstacle to opening ties with Riyadh.
“It is very possible that Biden could lay down a challenge to Netanyahu in which he lays out the opportunity for peace with Saudi, but also demands that Israel recommit to a Palestinian state,” al-Omari said.
“It’s something that can lay the ground for one of the most consequential developments in Middle East history. And frankly for Trump, he could pick it up as a continuation of the Abraham Accords, which is part of his legacy."
With the Israeli Knesset, its parliament, heading into a three-month summer recess next week, now might be the time where the prime minister could agree to a six-week cease-fire for hostage release, without triggering a coup among right-wing members of his coalition.
“A Knesset recess insulates Netanyahu from a vote of no confidence by coalition partners Itamar Ben-Gvir or Bezalel Smotrich, both of whom have threatened to bolt Netanyahu’s coalition if there is a deal,” Aaron David Miller and Adam Israelevitz, fellows at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a piece for Foreign Policy.
Even as Biden’s cease-fire deal calls for negotiations on a permanent end to the war to take place about three weeks into the truce, Netanyahu has called for Israel to maintain “overriding security control” for the foreseeable future.
“As long as Netanyahu can hold his coalition through the Knesset recess, the earliest call for any new elections would be in early 2025 — conveniently aligning the Israeli and U.S. political calendars. Indeed, Netanyahu would then be in a position to adjust his strategy and tactics based on who the next U.S. president is,” Miller and Israelevitz wrote.
Further complicating matters is that Saudi Arabia’s openness to normalize ties with Israel is contingent on the U.S. signing a mutual defense pact, a treaty that is expected to require Senate approval and viewed as having the best chance of buy-in from Democrats under Biden, as opposed to a potential President Trump.
There are few legislative days on the calendar to follow through on the process of vetting a treaty and bringing it to a vote, but Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called it achievable.
“It's an interesting thing — things can move at the speed of molasses, or they can move at the speed of lightning here. There's always time,” Cardin told The Hill earlier this week.
“I know that there has been a lot of work done in regards to normalization, and there is a path forward if we can get stability in the Middle East. So a lot depends on the timing of the path forward for peace. And I think if that happens, you might see some progress yet this year.”
