You also have to factor in whether the US would be willing to let Israel initiate a long bloody protracted ground war in Gaza given the impending US elections. Also you make a valid point that any Israeli incursion into Gaza would immediately open up a northern front with Hezbollah.
The pressure is mounting on Bibi to do the right thing and announce a ceasefire - step back and start looking to get their hostages out.
There's nothing we can do to stop him, any more than we can make the Israelis let fuel into Gaza or turn the power on so that hospitals and desalination plants can function. Israel is a sovereign nation, the only lever we have to pull is foreign aid and we can't do much there with the House functionally closed.
Sanitation conditions are such that disease outbreaks are already starting, and sooner or later we'll start seeing stuff like typhus that will be hard to stay in front of with mere aid trucks. I doubt even a ceasefire will keep Hezbollah from entering the game once that kicks off in earnest. Netanyahu would have to normalize power and the flow of goods into Gaza, and soon, which seems like a remote possibility.
TBF that relationship has always been one where the tail wags the dog; anyone who steps out of line and goes against the lobby (which is to say the Israeli government) gets stomped on, as we are seeing at varying levels across US society nowadays.
It’s almost impossible to see what benefit the US actually gets from its apparent closest ally.
Votes and funding. I ran the math the other day in the POTUS race thread. Neither political party can win the presidency without at least some of the Jewish vote, because states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and Michigan are in play. They cannot afford to alienate that interest group entirely. Trump has been talking big about Netanyahu, but it's one thing to run your mouth on social media from a sofa, and another to sit behind the Resolute desk.
