Joe Biden is desperate for this war to end – but neither Netanyahu nor Hamas is in any hurry

Beware cornering a US president anxious about re-election. Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly ignored that advice in his dealings with Joe Biden, and this week his country learned the price.

It came in the revelation that Biden had withheld the supply of about 3,500 bombs, refusing to let US munitions play a part in an Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have sought refuge. The president was at pains to say he was not giving up his “ironclad” commitment to Israel. Instead, it was just the specific, long-threatened Rafah operation that he would not back with weapons. “We’re not walking away from Israel’s security,” Biden told CNN. “We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas.”

To understand why this is such a big deal, remind yourself of the people and the countries involved. The US is Israel’s most crucial ally. Israel’s former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin used to say that his country’s number one strategic asset was not this or that weapon – not even its unconfirmed, and undenied, nuclear arsenal – but its relationship with Washington. For many decades, the US has served as Israel’s chief arms supplier and diplomatic protector. And yet in the space of less than six weeks, Washington has withheld its veto at the UN security council, allowing a resolution to pass in late March that Israel wanted blocked, and now it has closed the doors to at least part of its armoury.

What’s more, these actions were taken by a man who is, by some distance, the most personally devoted supporter of Israel ever to sit in the Oval Office. Biden is a Democrat from the era when the notion of a restored Jewish homeland in the Middle East – promising an end to two