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*Now batting for Israel: Joe Biden*
By: Ben Smith
June 5, 2010 07:04 AM EDT

On Tuesday in New York, Vice President Joe
Biden<http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/JoeBiden> was
feeling Israel’s pain.

“I think Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interest,”
he told Charlie Rose on his interview show. “I mean, again, look, you can
argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not and
the — but the truth of the matter is,
Israel<http://find.politico.com/index.cfm?adv=0&reporters=&dt=all&key=israel>
has
a right to know — they're at war with Hamas — has a right to know whether or
not arms are being smuggled in.”

“So what's the big deal here? What's the big deal of insisting [aid] go
straight to Gaza?” Biden asked.

AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, rushed out a statement
enthusiastically endorsing his position. “He’s clearly a friend of Israel
and what he did was a very courageous thing to do in the face of worldwide
criticism,” said Jack Rosen, a Biden friend who chairs the American Council
for World Jewry.

But a few hours later, other administration officials gave reporters a very
different line on the Israeli attack on a convoy of ships carrying relief
supplies to Gaza.

Israel’s “Gaza policy is bankrupt and needs to be changed,” an American
official told POLITICO<http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/US_Pressing_Israel_on_Gaza.html#>
a few hours after Biden’s remarks. “There is no question that we need a new
approach to Gaza,” an official told the New York Times for the next day’s
front page.

“The Biden interlude sure was nice while it lasted,” quipped Noah Silverman
of the Republican Jewish Committee, which backs Israel’s position to the
hilt.

Biden’s instinctive embrace of Israel at a moment it was under fire from the
international community was the most vivid example yet of Biden’s emergence
as the West Wing’s most prominent public supporter of the Jewish state. But
the live question among close watchers of the Obama administration’s
frustrating approach to the Middle East is whether Biden’s role is merely to
feel Israel’s pain — or whether in private counsels he’s an effective
advocate for a more pro-Israel policy.

As Israel and American
supporters<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38010.html> look
for an ally in the White House, many say they believe Biden is pressing for
a softer line on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a
harder one on Hamas. Biden and his advisers have privately upheld the public
administration position, they say, of opposing an American-backed peace
plan, something reportedly championed by National Security Adviser James
Jones.

And while administration officials insist that Biden has no foreign policy
other than the president’s — “there’s not a lot of daylight” between Biden’s
recent statements and Obama’s own, National Security Council chief of staff
Dennis McDonough told POLITICO — pro-Israel members of Congress and
pro-Israel groups see Biden as their top administration ally.

“Joe Biden understands these issues, has a decades-long familiarity with the
players and the facts and is pushing back hard against the people in the
administration who have a largely Arab-aligned view of the world,” said an
official at a major pro-Israel organization in Washington.

“He is far and away the go-to guy in the administration — head and shoulders
above everyone else on Israel,” said a pro-Israel Congressional source.
“He’s regarded as the guy who’s most sympathetic to Israel.”

No other administration official, after all, has anything like the same
history with the Israelis as Biden, who likes to recall his meetings with a
chain-smoking Golda Meir in the 1970s.

When the administration sought to improve ties with Netanyahu in March, it
was Biden who made the (ill-fated) trip, which ended badly after Israel’s
Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East
Jerusalem.

With American Jews and Israelis nervous about a White House that is making
new demands in the hopes of a final peace with a Palestinian state, Biden’s
ability to offer reassurances on the White House’s goals is unique in an
administration whose other key players have less experience in the region.

But there’s no evidence that Biden has, in fact, taken a different stance
from Obama on specific matters of policy. When his trip in March fell apart
with the East Jerusalem announcement, it was Biden himself who — after a
long discussion — issued a statement applying the charged verb “condemn” to
the Israeli move.

Still, Biden has also assumed an unusual role in the Obama foreign policy
process, as the figure most willing to challenge the prevailing internal
wisdom, as when he opposed escalation in Afghanistan.

“He sees himself as the guy who develops alternatives within the policy
framework,” said Steve Clemons, a fellow at the New America Foundation who
moves widely in foreign policy circles.

“He’s supposed to be the Israel hugger,” said Clemons, who sees Biden’s
reassuring words on Israel as part of his “portfolio.”

Council on Foreign Relations president emeritus Leslie Gelb, an old Biden
ally, said the vice president also has been able to rely on decades of
experience in a region where Obama and other senior aides lack experience.

“The others aren’t aware of the history and all the emotionality connected
with Israel, and they aren’t aware of just how much the rhetoric matters and
triggers action,” said Gelb, who noted that he no longer talks to Biden
regularly and wasn’t speaking for him.

But he said he doubted Biden had supported the Obama administration’s
opening gambit with the Israelis, a demand last year for a full freeze on
construction in disputed areas that was intended to open the door to direct
talks with the Palestinians. Those have yet to begin.

“I’ve talked to him about this stuff for years and years, and I would be
very surprised if he thought the Israelis would agree to it,” he said.

Administration officials dismissed any talk of internal disagreements,
which, on the charged subject of the Middle East in the past have become
damaging public feuds, as well as pressure points for an Israeli government
that prides itself on understanding American politics.

“Across the administration, there is a unanimity of views on the importance
of reestablishing leadership and engagement in the Middle East,” said
McDonough. “As with so much of what the vice president brings to the table,
he’s got a wealth of experience and expertise in this region — he’s got a
deep network for friends and colleagues with whom he’s worked over the
years.”

Another administration official said Biden’s role in the Middle East process
was nothing like his stance on Afghanistan: He has not staked out an
internal position, or suggested he’s not on board with presidential policy.

Michael Adler, a Miami real estate magnate who chaired the fundraising for
Biden’s presidential campaign, and who has spoken to him recently, agreed
that Biden is “totally in concert” with the administration’s efforts to
muscle the peace process back on track.

But he noted that “the policy of this administration has evolved over time,”
and that Biden always understood the difference between the sort of total
freeze on construction that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared at
one point to demand and the partial freeze that the Israelis offered as a
compromise.

“The president has said, Joe Biden has said, we don’t dictate to the
Israelis — we give advice to the Israelis. If they listen to 90 percent of
it, that’s pretty good,” Adler said. “The administration, and certainly Joe
Biden, understand that.”
--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co