Will Israel arms freeze help Biden pull off same trick as Ronald Reagan?

Forty years apart, two US presidents tried similar solutions to a crisis in the Middle East. Reagan’s gambit paid off handsomely

Joe Biden’s decision to freeze exports of heavy munitions to Israel is a big moment but it is not without precedent.
In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan, then the US president, paused exports of F16 fighter jets and cluster bombs to the Middle Eastern state over its conduct in Lebanon. Just as today, the move was designed to bring to an end a brutal war that had been sparked by a terrorist attack and in which civilian massacres had caused a global outcry.
Mr Reagan was trying to bring to heel Menachem Begin, Israel’s sixth Prime Minister and the founder of the Right-wing political party Likud. Mr Begin had laid siege to Beirut in a bid to finish off the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and claim victory over what was then the Jewish state’s greatest foe.
In a prime example of history repeating itself, Mr Biden’s target is Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister and head of Likud. He too has created a siege and is desperate to finish off his adversaries.
Only by being able to claim “total victory” over Hamas in Gaza does he stand any chance of remaining in power.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah… I’m not supplying the weapons,” Mr Biden told CNN on Wednesday night. “It’s just wrong. We’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”
Like Mr Reagan before him, Mr Biden is likely to be guided not just by a gut feel for right and wrong, but by three other pressures – one legal, one political and one strategic.
Legally, the US is obliged to stop the export of weapons to countries that are deemed “more likely than not” to violate international law while using them.
It is a new standard, introduced by Mr Biden himself last year, and the State Department was supposed to have published an assessment of Israel’s actions in relation to it on Wednesday.
Given that almost half the 35,000 civilians reported to have died in Gaza perished under heavy bombardment in the first three weeks of the war, it would not be surprising if Israel was found to be in breach.
The bombs which did the bulk of the damage in that early blitzkrieg were the type of large diameter 2,000lb and 500lb bombs which have now been put on hold.
Asked by CNN, “Have those bombs been used to kill civilians in Gaza?” Biden responded that they had. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” he said.
The State Department’s legal opinion on arms exports to Israel is expected to be published late on Friday.
In 1982, Mr Reagan also cited legal concerns over the export of F16 fighter jets to Israel. ‘’We are forbidden by law to release those planes,’’ he said amid the war in Lebanon.
Politically, Mr Biden is also coming under extreme pressure. He is running for re-election and the polls are tight, with much of his liberal base repulsed by Israel’s actions in Gaza.
His big hope is to force a ceasefire well ahead of the November election – something that will open the prospect of a wider peace in the middle east through the “normalisation” of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“Biden is desperately trying to score with a grand deal but is running out of time,” said the Israeli economist Manuel Trajtenberg. “He has two levers: arms and the UN, so he is serious.”
The final element is strategic. Israel is forging deep ties with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states, but it is still reliant on the US for much of its clout in the region.
As Mr Reagan put it back in 1982: “Israel can only know real security if it doesn’t have to remain an armed camp far beyond what its size warrants.’’  He added that Israel’s security would only be guaranteed by having “neighbours that recognise its right to exist”.
Mr Reagan’s arms freeze did the trick: Israel pulled out of Lebanon, the PLO’s leadership moved on and Mr Begin was pushed out as prime minister the following year.
So can Mr Biden pull off the same manoeuvre?
“It certainly presents Netanyahu with a sharp dilemma: whether to push ahead with a full operation in Rafah and lose US support; or hold off and risk losing the support of his hard right coalition members,” said Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“He may try to split the difference by limiting himself to an operation along the Philadelphia corridor which the US has indicated is more acceptable. 
“He could also seek to blame Israel’s current strategic impasse on Biden, arguing ‘that were it not for Biden turning against Israel, he would have defeated Hamas’.”
But there is also the prospect of the arms freezing backfiring.
“It’s problematic,” said Sima Shine, an Iran specialist and former Mossad officer. “It works against the national pride of the Israeli People.
“It makes it much more difficult for [moderates] like Benny Ganz to leave the government. He’ll be presented as a puppet of the US, harming his chances to win elections.
“In that sense it plays into the hands of the extremists. In addition, it’s emboldening our and the US enemies – Iran and its proxies.”