Biden is a ‘lame duck’ president – but can he still put pressure on Israel?

With fewer than 70 days left in office, United States President Joe Biden has officially entered the “lame duck” phase of his presidency – the period of time between administrations when a president’s influence and ability to shape policy dwindle as his successor prepares to take office.

But with the looming end of Biden’s five-decade political career comes a final chance to define his legacy – particularly when it comes to foreign policy, which Biden has long viewed as one of his signature issues.

For those opposed to the current administration’s unwavering support for Israel during its more than yearlong war on Gaza, this lame duck period is a final opportunity “to try to push Biden to move past a legacy of genocide”, said Annelle Sheline, a former US Department of State official who resigned in March in protest against the Biden administration’s Israel policy.

But it is unlikely that the administration will backtrack on its multibillion-dollar support for Israel’s war after a year of deepening humanitarian crisis and large-scale evidence of mass war crimes in which the US is deeply implicated.

“Now that there’s less of a political price to pay, Biden could choose to do good things,” Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, told Al Jazeera. “But it’s never been entirely political; it is ideological. This is just how he believes the US-Israel relationship should work, and that’s with basically zero pressure on Israel about anything.”

“I have no hope whatsoever that they’ll do anything meaningful, constructive, helpful or courageous in these last months,” Duss added.

Robert Hunter, a former US ambassador to NATO, said Biden should stop all arms shipments to Israel “tomorrow” but would never do so.

“Biden has throughout his career been a strong supporter of Israel,” Hunter told Al Jazeera. “But it means that whenever he’s had a serious chance to influence things, first as vice president and now as president, he has never – except for one pause [on shipments of heavy bombs] – been willing to go against what Israel, and in particular [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, wants him to do.”

“It is something that he believes in,” Hunter added.

Thirty-day aid deadline passes

As Democrats assess the impact of their foreign policy on Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, there are practical things that the administration can – and critics argue should – do before Trump takes office on January 20.

While some of those measures may be later reversed by the Trump administration, they would still have the ability to halt or at least slow down Israel’s escalating attacks on northern Gaza as well as send a message to the public and the incoming administration that the US does have leverage on Israel, even though it has so far declined to use it.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration had the opportunity to ensure that Israel faced consequences for its actions after a 30-day deadline that the administration had set on the delivery of aid to Gaza expired. However, as Biden met Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House, reiterating Washington’s “ironclad” support for its ally, the US said there would be no change to military assistance to Israel, even as the Middle Eastern country failed to carry out the steps requested by Washington.

“There were a lot of people who said things like, ‘Well, politically, the Democrats have to continue to support Israel, or this could be an election issue for them,’” Sheline told Al Jazeera. “And now that the election is in the rear-view mirror, clearly, this is what they want. They say things like, ‘We’re saddened by what’s happening,’ but clearly, they’re not going to use any leverage.”

“Even now, when they won’t suffer politically for it, they fully support everything that’s happening,” she added. “Otherwise, they would actually do something about it.”

With more than 40,000 Palestinians killed and Israel’s wars in the region only widening, the Biden administration choosing to withhold arms, issue more sanctions or clear the way for full inclusion of the state of Palestine at the United Nations would do little to reverse the immense human cost of its support for Israel so far. But those measures could pave the way for a change in approach and force the hand of the Trump administration.

“It is certainly late,” Josh Paul, another former State Department official who resigned last year in protest against the administration’s policy towards Gaza, said at a Forum on the Arms Trade and Democracy for the Arab World Now event last week.

“That said, it is never too late.”

One last opportunity

It’s not uncommon for an exiting administration to rush through a flurry of policies and measures before the new administration comes in.

In the last three months of Trump’s first term as president before Biden took office in January 2021, the administration announced more than $23bn in arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, $500m in precision ammunition to Saudi Arabia and – with less than one month left –  $300m in small diameter bombs to Saudi Arabia. In January 2021, the Trump administration also declared Yemen’s Houthi movement a “foreign terrorist organisation”, a designation that kicked in just one day before Trump left office.

The Biden administration could get equally busy if it wants to.

In August, the administration announced $20bn in arms sales to Israel, and the US Senate is set to weigh in on that sale this month after Senator Bernie Sanders filed legislation forcing a vote on the matter.

Biden also has wide leeway to suspend weapons transfers to Israel on his own, Paul added. And as Trump has pitched himself as the president who will bring “peace” to the region – even as the president-elect appoints hardline pro-Israelis to prominent positions – halting weapons deliveries to Israel now would shift the burden of reversing course onto the next administration.

“That would be something that the Trump administration would have to make a conscious decision to turn back on,” Paul said, noting that “changing a policy is pretty easy to do from one administration to another, but changing a legal determination is somewhat harder.”

Beyond applying US laws or using US leverage – both steps that the Biden administration has consistently refused to take – the Biden administration could expand its sanctions on Israeli settlers, possibly targeting Israel’s most far-right ministers, like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, as the United Kingdom is considering. It could potentially also recognise Palestinian statehood and clear the way for the UN Security Council to approve Palestine as a full member of the UN.

“These are to some extent blue sky,” Paul said. “But they are also all things within the president’s remit and things that the president could do if he actually wanted to.”

Duss is doubtful the Biden administration will do anything differently in its last weeks in office.

“When it comes to imposing real costs, really standing up for human rights, particularly Palestinian rights, I don’t expect anything from them,” he said.

“But one thing I really would want them to do is just tell the truth,” he added, calling on the administration, for instance, to release internal reports on the six Palestinian NGOs Israel designated as “terrorist groups” in 2021 or to publicise US assessments of the allegations Israel made against UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, that some of its staff were involved in the October 7, 2023, attacks against Israel.

“But that would require them to have the tiniest amount of courage,” Duss said.

Every minute matters

After Republicans won the White House and control of the US Senate and will likely win the House of Representatives as well, more critics of US policy towards Israel may belatedly find the courage to speak out.

“I expect that we will see Democrats suddenly recognising that genocide is wrong who were unwilling to criticise Biden,” Sheline told Al Jazeera. “I expect that we will see people who try to salvage their reputations and say, ‘We were doing what we could on the inside.’ But I think the evidence is clear that the US had massive leverage that it did not use.”

It’s not just Biden’s legacy that’s at stake.

“Particularly given the election results, there will be a lot of senior administration officials both in the White House and in the executive agencies who need to start really thinking hard about their legacy,” Paul said. “While it is too late for tens of thousands in Gaza, I think there are still some opportunities there to salvage something and also to send a signal to their own party that it is not too late for that party to change either.”

“It is never never too late to do the right thing,” he added.

That potentially means saving thousands of lives – something advocates stress Biden still has the power to do.

“He might be a lame duck in US politics, but he is definitely not a lame duck as it relates to the lives of the Palestinian people, and every day, every minute matters,” Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison, a Palestinian American political analyst, told Al Jazeera last week.

“It’s absolutely [Biden’s] responsibility to immediately stop the genocide in Gaza. He can do it with a phone call,” she added. “This is an Israel-US accomplice war in the region, and it is incumbent on him to actually stop the genocide before he leaves office.”