After Senator Chuck Schumer called out Israeli extremism on the Senate floor last week (along with the lesser but far more noticed point of calling for new Israeli elections), Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu blasted back. He accused Schumer of “opposing the people of Israel” on American Sunday talk shows and instructed security officials not to meet with Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf in apparent retaliation. Meanwhile, Donald Trump accused American Jews who vote for Democrats as being Israel-haters and also self-hating Jews. Each side’s involvement in the other’s politics is front and center and the political fighting is fast and furious. But the more important fighting is over policy, and these arguments are now happening across a range of issues. What matters is less that the two sides are not on the same page, but how they can become so.

At first glance, it appears that the policy divides between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government are deepening. The U.S.’ frustration with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and its perception that Israeli roadblocks are preventing the situation from drastically improving have resulted in more strident American criticism, along with American airdrops of assistance and the operation to build a floating pier, neither of which is the preferred or most efficient way to get more aid into Gaza. The dispute over a potential Israeli operation in Rafah has also morphed. While initially the U.S. warned that it could not support a new IDF push into the city without first seeing a viable plan to move Palestinian civilians out of the way, Jake Sullivan stated on Monday that the U.S. no longer supports a massive ground operation under any circumstance and would rather see Hamas’ four Rafah battalions defeated through other means, such as targeted raids. 

There are, however, signs that while the policy divides may be deeper, the tactical rifts that they have caused are starting to close. Repeated American exhortations for Israel to do a better job facilitating the movement of assistance through Gaza, particularly in the north, have resulted in Israel opening up a northern crossing—the first since October 7—and taking great pains to convey that it is cooperating with the maritime corridor from Cyprus. While the divide on Rafah is not going away anytime soon, Netanyahu agreed to send a delegation of senior officials to Washington, including Ron Dermer and National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi, to paper over the differences as much as possible and hopefully come to a joint plan that both sides can live with. This may be a result of American pressure, an Israeli determination that it cannot risk sacrificing future American support for possible Israeli action in Lebanon, an Israeli calculus that the short-term imperatives in Gaza are outweighed by the long-term imperatives of maintaining U.S. bipartisan support for Israel, or likely all three. But the louder public political battles are in contrast with the quieter private efforts to bridge the policy differences.

The policy arguments serve neither side strategically, and the way to move beyond them is for each to better understand the core interests involved and the red lines at play. The most important of these is Israel’s determination that Hamas must be finished off militarily at all costs. This is not a position confined to Netanyahu, but one that is shared by everyone in the war cabinet, everyone in the security cabinet, everyone in the government, and nearly all Israeli Jews across the political spectrum. Too many people appear to have forgotten who started the October 7 conflict and who is most to blame, but Israelis have not. There is no debate over an operation in Rafah that will turn Hamas battalions into an uncoordinated group of militants rather than a coordinated terrorist operation, only a debate over its timing. This makes the administration’s new position that a large operation should not happen an element that is going to cause ongoing friction with this Israeli government and prime minister, and any future Israeli government and prime minister.

This new U.S. stance is also a misstep in that it does not comport with the U.S.’ core interests. The American interest is not about preventing any operation in Rafah, since if it were, that would have been the administration’s position from the beginning. The core American interest is limiting civilian deaths and containing an ever-worsening humanitarian disaster. If President Joe Biden’s shift to opposing any large-scale operation in Rafah is a negotiating tactic designed to get Israel to take the humanitarian aspect of this more seriously, it seems to have worked, but it will ultimately cost Biden politically when Israel ends up going into Rafah and it looks as if U.S. demands were ignored.

What all of this back and forth needs to accomplish is a result where Israel goes into Rafah and deals a definitive blow to the bulk of Hamas’ remaining organized forces, and where the U.S. can chalk up a genuine humanitarian win by separating Palestinian civilians in Rafah—the overwhelming majority of whom are not from Rafah but are internally displaced within Gaza—from IDF operations and ensuring that they have shelter and food. This can happen if the U.S. convinces the Rafah hardliners within Israel’s war cabinet that the operation can wait—most likely by leaning as hard on Qatar as possible to deliver a Hamas agreement on a hostage release in the next week or two. Israel should then take advantage of the pause to build as many temporary shelters as possible in northern Gaza and facilitate civilians beginning to return there. This goal will face many hurdles, from the current Israeli position not to allow civilians to return to northern Gaza to the ongoing logistical difficulties of ensuring that there is shelter and food in the territory, but it is the only outcome that will create a win from the U.S.-Israel fighting.

Hamas’ defeat in Rafah is both an American and Israeli interest, as is immediately alleviating the humanitarian disaster. Neither side should get distracted by smaller issues. Israel is not going to back down from its determination that an operation in Rafah must happen, and the U.S. is not going to back down from its determination that Hamas’ brutality and barbarism do not justify an indeterminate civilian cost. The middle ground that allows for both of these core positions is available, and leaders on both sides need to seize it.