In a closed-door meeting with Arab American leaders in Michigan this week, one of President Biden’s top foreign policy aides acknowledged mistakes in the administration’s response to the war in Gaza, saying he did not have “any confidence” that Israel’s government was willing to take “meaningful steps” toward Palestinian statehood.
The remarks came after months of public and private admonitions from the Biden administration for Israel to take a more surgical approach in a conflict that has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Gaza. On Thursday, Mr. Biden himself declared that Israel had gone “over the top” in its response to the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
The Biden aide, Jon Finer, a deputy national security adviser, offered some of the administration’s clearest expressions of regret for what he called “missteps” it had made from the beginning of the violence, and he pledged that it would do better.
During the meeting on Thursday with Arab American political leaders in Dearborn, Mich., Mr. Finer said, “We are very well aware that we have missteps in the course of responding to this crisis since Oct. 7,” according to a recording of the gathering obtained by The New York Times. A National Security Council official confirmed the recording was authentic.
Mr. Finer added: “We have left a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration and the country values the lives of Palestinians. And that began, frankly, pretty early in the conflict.”
The war in Gaza has become part of a cascade of political problems for Mr. Biden, who has remained publicly supportive of Israel and resisted demands within the Democratic Party to call for a cease-fire. His position since Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, along with his remarks casting doubt on the death toll from Israeli airstrikes and calling the loss of life “a price of waging war,” has angered young people, Black voters and progressives who are more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Mr. Biden himself has acknowledged the pro-Palestinian protesters who have become a frequent presence at his public events. Last month, a campaign rally on abortion rights in Virginia was repeatedly interrupted by protesters urging Mr. Biden to call for a cease-fire.
After that rally, Mr. Biden met privately with about 40 invited attendees and urged them not to view demonstrators as political enemies, saying that they deserved sympathy and that their cause was “really important,” according to three people who attended the meeting.
A Biden campaign spokeswoman declined to comment.
But the recording of the Dearborn meeting provides an unusual behind-the-scenes glimpse at the administration’s attempts to shore up support in the critical battleground state of Michigan, which has a large Arab American population in Dearborn and other Detroit suburbs. Mr. Biden’s support in the state has eroded, polls show. His allies there have warned the White House in recent months that he runs the risk of losing the state, which he carried in 2020.
Mr. Finer and several other senior Biden administration officials, including Samantha Power, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, traveled to Dearborn on Thursday for a series of meetings, including the one in which Mr. Finer’s comments were recorded.
Those sessions came a week after Biden campaign aides, including Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the manager of his 2024 bid, quietly traveled to the city and met with a few officials, including Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American progressive who is at the forefront of Democratic calls for a cease-fire.
However, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud of Dearborn and several other local officials declined to meet with Ms. Chávez Rodríguez. Mr. Hammoud later issued a statement saying he wished to speak with policymakers…
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