Clip: Will Biden's move to hold back weapons from Israel open a permanent rift

Jeffrey Goldberg: Good evening and welcome to Washington Week. An ex and possibly future president on trial in a porn star hush money case, a governor who shot her dog, a presidential candidate claiming that a worm ate part of his brain, and a QAnon adherent who believes that she should be in charge of the Republican Party. These are tonight's Jeopardy categories.

Join me in welcoming our contestants, Peter Baker, the Chief White House correspondent at The New York Times, Jonathan Karl is the Chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, Elaina Platt Calabro covers national politics for The Atlantic, and Vivian Salama is a national politics reporter with The Wall Street Journal.

Welcome to Washington Week quiz show, weird categories. Let's start with something very serious though before we get to some of the oddness of this week's politics, the war in the Middle East and Joe Biden.

Peter, is this a permanent rupture that we're looking at between the Biden administration and the Israeli government?

Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, we'll see. I mean, look, Jeff, you know, is better than I do, and anybody does in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations is often marked by moments of rupture and tension. This is certainly one of the most extreme versions we've seen in a number of years.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Probably since the 80s.

Peter Baker: Probably since the 80s, exactly. Of course, Reagan did of course hold back weapons and George H.W. Bush held back loan guarantees and so forth. But it depends. It really depends on what Bibi Netanyahu and the war cabinet do in Rafah. If they end up going into Rafah and Biden then feels compelled to hold off offensive weapons, that is a pretty big moment. At the moment, it's just one shipment of one set of bombs. It's more symbolic.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Symbolic shot across --

Peter Baker:  Exactly, he's making a point. And the question is, does Bibi Netanyahu get that point.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Vivian, what does this mean for the war effort? I mean, I'm curious about the war effort and also Biden's political positioning in all of this.

Vivian Salama, National Politics Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: So, the likely impact in the short term is probably minimal. Israel does have stockpiles that it will be able to defend itself and to also conduct its attack, its offensive.

Jeffrey Goldberg: But, notably, America is not holding back on defensive weaponry, anti-rocket.

Vivian Salama: Well, that's just it. President Biden, even with his comments this week, made it very clear that, you know, with regard to the Iron Dome that is so critical to Israel's defense, he is not going to touch that. He's very specific about certain types of bombs and artillery. That's what he's looking to hold back on. And Bibi Netanyahu sort of shot back and assured the public in Israel that they have enough, that they can still continue their offensive and kind of carry out this war to eliminate Hamas.

But it is still significant regardless of that. President Biden has come under significant political headwinds over this decision to sort of tap dance around the question of aid to Israel. He has gradually come around to say, okay, we're going to review it, we're going to consider withholding. But he's always added that caveat of, you know, we'll still give them what they need to defend themselves.

Jeffrey Goldberg: There's this new report from the State Department looking at possible violations of international law on the part of Israel. Does that give Biden some top cover here to keep pressuring Netanyahu?

Vivian Salama: For sure. And so the State Department report, which, by the way, was several days late because you could see that there was a lot of internal wrangling.

They said that there's reasonable evidence of possible violations of international law in Israel.

There's a lot of caveats in the report already. They even said that they didn't have -- because they don't have access because of wartime conditions, they could not really thoroughly assess the situation. But they are still raising that possibility, which, by the way, will irritate the Israeli government, without question.

And so it is still significant just in terms of taking that step. But, of course, Biden's critics say it's too little, too late.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Jon, I was talking to some folks on the Pentagon who are worried that these moves by Biden to distance himself from Netanyahu are actually going to make negotiating a ceasefire more difficult because the pressure on Hamas to release hostages, Israeli hostages, has gone down. Do you have any sense of where this is going to take the war effort?

Jonathan Karl, Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News: Well, and it seems like that deal is, is falling apart. I think that's -- you know, again, the, the actual bombs themselves, we're basically talking about 2,000-pound bombs, that's the main thing holding back, Israel has got a stockpile. That's probably not necessarily what's going to be significant in a Rafah invasion. I mean, they are what you take tunnels out with.

I think that one of the big challenges for Israel in all of this is a breakdown in the bipartisan consensus in the United States of U.S. support for Israel. I mean, look at how Republicans reacted to Biden's latest move. I mean, they're going to launch another round of impeachment proceedings.

And when, you know, Biden -- I mean the idea that he was going to hold back some of these weapons had been out there, had been kind of leaked. then he talked about it in the CNN interview, but there was no notification whatsoever to anybody in Congress, including Speaker Johnson, who had just laid his entire political position on the line to support what aid for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan.

You know, it seems like a little bit of a heads up to the speaker of the House that you need on something like this might have been worthwhile.

Jeffrey Goldberg: One more quick question on this. Is this going to hurt Biden with traditional Jewish support for Democrats? I mean, how does this play out within the party?

Peter Baker: What Biden is proving is that governing from the middle stinks, right? It's a terrible place to be. He's not made any friends on the left, which is still mad at him, doesn't think this is nearly enough, hasn't gone far enough. And now he's alienated the people who admired --

Jeffrey Goldberg: This is in Michigan, Arab-American voters back to --

Peter Baker: And Jewish supporters who admired his support for Israel now feel abandoned or angry and so forth. So, he's managed to alienate a lot of people.

The real answer to him politically is he has to get the war finished, so that by the fall, people are thinking about other things.