Israel is fending off a brutal air, land and sea attack from Hamas but dysfunction in the U.S. could imperil aid.
For the first time in its history, the House of Representatives is without an elected Speaker. President Joe Biden’s pick for ambassador to Israel has not been confirmed, nor have his nominees to nearby nations Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon and Egypt. Military promotions, including for the chief of naval operations, have been held up by a single senator because of abortion policy. And the whole U.S. government is running on a continuing resolution, meaning another government shutdown looms in a little over a month.
As bad as that is for American domestic policy, it’s particularly bad timing now, analysts say, when staunch U.S. ally Israel is fending off a brutal air, land and sea attack from Hamas, a Palestinian militant group.
“I think it’s going to send a very bad message,” says Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It could make our response significantly less effective” and imperil aid to both Israel and Ukraine.
Positions in the United States Central Command – which has responsibility for supporting Israel – are vacant because of the “hold” put on by a GOP colleague, meaning people have to do two jobs until the holds on military promotions are lifted, adds Reed, a West Point graduate who later taught at the military school.
And while Reed says he doesn’t think the recent political turmoil in the United States enabled the Hamas attack, which he said came after “many months of planning,” the lack of a House Speaker and the holds on diplomatic nominees and military personnel don’t help.
“I think they’re aware of that,” Reed says.
Hamas took advantage of the internal turmoil in the Israeli government, notes Laura Blumenfeld, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who previously served as senior policy advisor on the State Department’s Israeli-Palestinian negotiating team.
“America should listen carefully and make sure the same thing doesn’t happen here,” Blumenfeld says. “The Israelis feel like the internal division is what directly led to” Hamas being able to attack when they did, she says. “America would be wise to watch and learn.”
Despite the infighting inside Capitol Hill, the Biden administration can do some things on its own to support Israel, where at least 11 American citizens were killed in the war as of Monday.
Biden has been in frequent contact with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader said in an address Monday. The U.S. president, after a phone huddle with the allied leaders of France, Germany and Great Britain, issued a joint statement declaring “steadfast and united support” of Israel, “unequivocal condemnation” of Hamas, and a recognition of the “legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” which the leaders said were not shared by Hamas.
That followed the sending of a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group and military aircraft closer to Israel as a show of support. The United States is also supplying Israel with munitions and other military supplies, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
But as the crisis continues, it will test the abilities of a federal government hobbled by intra-party squabbles, power struggles and power plays by individual politicians, lawmakers and analysts warn.
“This kind of situation is what many were worrying about, with all the holds on nominations and military promotions. This could potentially reduce military readiness and leave the United States less able to respond to things like this,” says University of Tampa political science professor Jonathan Lewallen, author of the book “Committees and the Decline of Lawmaking in Congress.”
When it comes to having no House Speaker, “We are in unknown waters,” since it’s not clear from House rules whether the speaker pro tem can do anything other than gavel the chamber in and out of session – let alone bring legislation to the floor to aid Israel, says Donald Moynihan, a Georgetown University professor who is an expert on the workings of government.
On a broader scale, the situation threatens “the reputation of the United States as the most powerful actor, one who has the capacity to step in and solve problems,” Moynihan says.
In the Senate, a single lawmaker in any party can put a “hold” on a nomination. It’s possible to bypass that hold, but the process takes many many hours to do, thwarting the chamber’s regular business.
Ambassadorial appointments have been held up in the Senate this year in part because Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who believes the COVID-19 virus leaked from a China lab, has demanded the Biden administration provide him with documents on federally funded virus research. Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, has held up nominees on a case-by-case basis for a variety of reasons.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, has put a hold on any and all military promotions to protest federal policy to pay for military personnel and their family members to travel out of state for abortions or other reproductive care.
Military leaders, the White House and many of Tuberville’s colleagues have pleaded with him to stop, but he has not relented. Last month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, held individual votes to confirm the posts of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chief of staff for the Army and commandant of the Marine Corps. But several hundred other posts are all still under Tuberville’s hold.
“We are without a head. That leaderless situation is very dangerous, at any point in our current affairs … and particularly dangerous right now,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview on MSNBC Monday. “We can’t be spending our time on internal squabbles at a moment of such criticality.”
There are two troubling impacts of the holds and the Speaker-less House, Lewallen says: either Israel and Ukraine are denied help and the United States starts to suffer from the unfilled diplomatic and military jobs, or the dysfunction becomes a new normal, with everything from budgets to military preparedness handled on a patchwork basis.
“Unfortunately, we now have a test case to see to what extent that is going to play out,” Lewallen says.