In the first weeks of the Israel-Hamas war, President Joe Biden in private discussions, praised himself, saying the advice he offered to his former boss, Barack Obama, in 2014 about the Israel-Gaza conflict which the latter turned down was now working in his (Biden’s) own administration, according to sources close to the US president. 

NBC News reports that Biden recounted in private that when he was vice president in 2014 and Israel mounted a military assault on Gaza, Obama and his staff rejected his (Biden’s) idea, that the best way to approach the Israelis is to hug them close but not criticise them, the sources noted. 

They said Biden had disagreed with how Obama publicly scolded Israel’s actions and voiced concern for Palestinian civilian deaths early into the 2014 conflict. As a result, Biden had argued, Obama squandered any ability to influence the Israeli government as it invaded Gaza, said the people familiar with his comments.

They said Biden’s message when he revisited the 2014 debate was: I was right then, and I am right now. 

The president’s private comparisons with his former boss have however subsided as outrage over rising civilian deaths in Gaza eclipsed the early praise for his approach, according to three of the people familiar with his comments. 
More than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Department.

But Biden’s confidence in his strategy has not wavered, these people said. If anything, it has hardened, they said, despite his administration’s recalibrated public message urging Israel to minimise civilian casualties and intense pressure for Biden to change course, some of it from members of his own Democratic Party.

“If this was the Obama years, we would’ve been a lot more publicly critical than we have been by now,” a senior administration official said. “And that wouldn’t work. We wouldn’t have the influence.”

Biden and his top aides have pointed to the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, some shifts in Israel’s military tactics from its original plans and now the deal to release hostages held by Hamas as evidence that his strategy is effective. 

John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told reporters Monday that Biden “believes right down to his core that the approach he’s been taking is getting results.”

“The approach we’re taking now is working,” Kirby said.

Asked about Biden’s comments regarding Obama’s handling of the 2014 Gaza conflict, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement, “The President’s senior White House and national security advisers have never heard the President say this, and do not believe it is accurate.”

A spokesperson for Obama declined to comment.

It remains to be seen whether Biden’s approach will ultimately work any better than Obama’s did. This conflict is unlike previous ones because of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis, said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former senior State Department official.

“This is completely different,” Miller said. “The Israelis are all in.”

Politically, Biden’s full embrace of Israel has been a liability with some Democrats, particularly younger and more progressive ones. Biden has expressed bewilderment at what he sees as some liberal Democrats’ criticism of Israel, according to people familiar with his comments. And while Biden has been willing to move on other issues when he has been lobbied by Democrats, he has refused to budge on Israel. 

He continues to reject calls to back a cease-fire. He said Friday that placing conditions on future U.S. military aid to Israel, as some Democrats have proposed, is “a worthwhile thought” but added, “I don’t think if I started off with that we’d ever gotten to where we are today.”

There is some frustration in the White House that more American hostages have not been released as part of the deal, a senior U.S. official said.

Administration officials are concerned about Hamas’ regrouping during the pause in fighting, the official said, but they are also worried about Israeli forces’ coming on strong in Gaza after the pause ends and killing many more civilians.

This week Biden administration officials conveyed to Israeli officials that they must approach any military action in southern Gaza with more care for civilians than they have in the north, a second U.S. official said. “We’ve been working with them on that,” the official said.

That message underscores growing disagreements between the Biden administration and the Israeli government, which are poised to widen as the war advances. Already administration officials say privately that they do not believe Israel has been doing everything it can to protect civilians despite their repeated, direct pleas that it do so. 

Whether Israeli leaders listen to the administration when the fighting resumes will be a test of Biden’s strategy. How much influence his approach gets him will be made plain in whatever plan Israel adopts for the postwar future of Gaza. Part of Biden’s calculus, administration officials say, has been that his early, unflinching embrace of Israel gives him the best chance to influence how a postwar Gaza will be governed.

“By doing that, he bought a lot of goodwill with Israel and the Israeli public overall,” the second U.S. official said.

At times, Biden has privately expressed frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war, according to people familiar with his comments. He has said privately that in the midst of the war is not the time to focus on Netanyahu, but officials do not see a long-term solution to the conflict if he remains in office, said three people familiar with Biden’s comments.

Obama had a deeply strained relationship with Netanyahu, largely over his administration’s diplomatic outreach to Iran. The tensions were widely known and often spilled into public view. From the start of the two-month conflict between Israel and Hamas in 2014, Obama was publicly critical of how Israel was carrying out military action in Gaza. He warned of the need to protect civilians, saying he was “deeply concerned.”

In the view of Obama and his top aides, the deaths of Palestinian civilians were going to increase, and the U.S. should not be seen as lopsidedly pro-Israel, in part because they believed it could inflame tensions across the region.