Eight years ago, in his final days as a lame-duck president, former President Barack Obama made a foreign policy decision that still gets Israeli officials’ blood boiling. 

Samantha Power, his ambassador to the United Nations, abstained from a December 2016 United Nations Security Council resolution demanding the immediate end to Israeli settlement construction that labeled parts of the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, as “occupied Palestinian territory.” By not vetoing the measure, she allowed the resolution to pass — a parting shot from Obama against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom Obama had frequently clashed. 

Now, President Joe Biden finds himself facing a deadline for his ability to make a difference on the world stage. But unlike Obama, who wanted to take a largely symbolic action in order to make a political point, Biden is still dealing with an ongoing war in the Middle East. Goals that have eluded his administration for months, such as efforts to reach a hostage agreement in Gaza and a cease-fire deal in Lebanon, still appear out of reach. 

“We absolutely will continue to be focused on securing a deal that brings the hostages home to their families, and separately on a diplomatic resolution that allows people on both sides of the Blue Line to safely return to their homes,” a White House spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Thursday.

President-elect Donald Trump reportedly told Netanyahu before the U.S. election that he wanted Israel’s wars ended by the time he enters office. But cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been in a “stalemate” for “some time,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Thursday. 

“They are going to continue to explore any possible opening to get the hostages released,” said Dana Stroul, who served as the Pentagon’s top Middle East official for much of the Biden administration. But one caveat is that partners in the Middle East — even those who might share interests with the Biden administration — may want to wait until Trump is in office to actually seal the deal.

“The actors in the region are familiar with Trump, have worked with him before, and are probably thinking about how far they can take things up to a certain line so that they can actually hand him wins starting on Jan. 21,” said Stroul.

Biden has also made a genuine push toward negotiating a deal normalizing ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and his administration appears poised to keep working toward that goal before January. 

“I think it’s a matter of when, not if,” said Stroul. “But it is hard for me to see the leaders of the region choosing to make all those commitments on Biden’s watch, as opposed to presenting those as a big package for a Trump victory, that he can claim credit for.”

Miller declined to answer on Thursday when asked whether Biden would follow Obama’s lead at the United Nations to act against Israel’s right-wing government. 

European and Arab states, who do want to target Netanyahu, could “try to put the outgoing administration in a dilemma, whether they go for these sorts of symbolic moves, to try to give the Netanyahu government a black eye,” said David Makovsky, a distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

While Biden has at times criticized Israel for not taking sufficient precautions to protect Palestinian civilians, disagreements between Washington and Jerusalem have not spilled into the open in the same way as those between Netanyahu and Obama, after Netanyahu accepted an invitation from then-House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress in 2015 without informing Obama first. 

Still, frustration at Netanyahu among Democrats runs deep.

“I think downstream in the bureaucracy, you can absolutely find people that would be in favor of such measures. The question, truly, is whether this is something that appeals to the principals, in other words Biden himself, [National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken,” said Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Is this the kind of thing right now that they want as their legacy?”

A former senior Biden administration official said there will be a “punitive instinct” within the State Department, “but that’s just not where the White House is.” 

One way that State Department bureaucrats who are less supportive of American aid to Israel could “signal their displeasure on the humanitarian front” would be to author a new national security memorandum discussing “the specific ways in which Israel is not upholding its obligations under international humanitarian law,” the former Biden administration official said.

“Put it out there on the record and then give the Democratic members of Congress something to organize around next year,” the official said, adding that such a largely symbolic move would likely be the extent of any critical policies against Israel — if Biden and Blinken even allowed such a document to be released. “At the end of the day, Biden is a true Zionist, and he has oriented his administration’s policies around support for the right of Israel to exist, and not about Bibi Netanyahu.” 

The Biden administration implemented sanctions against extremist West Bank settlers late last year, a move that has so far targeted only a handful of people. “While sanctions on violent settler entities might be expanded, anything along those lines is going to be ephemeral,” said Israel Policy Forum Chief Policy Officer Michael Koplow. 

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami urged Biden to place sanctions on far-right Israeli legislators Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, arguing that even short-term actions likely to be reversed by Trump could still be worthwhile. 

“It sets a precedent,” Ben-Ami told JI. “They should know that there will be presidents willing to hold them personally liable.” A White House spokesperson declined to comment when asked about possible action against Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.

According to The Washington Free Beacon, the State Department notified Congress on Election Day that it had waived mandatory terrorism-related sanctions on Palestinian Authority officials because it determined that a “blanket denial of visas to PLO members and PA officials … is not consistent” with U.S. desire to work with them to reach a two-state solution. A State Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday night. 

Biden came into office nearly four years ago with a desire to limit his involvement in the Middle East, but the region kept drawing him in. It’s sure to keep doing so for his final 73 days in office. 

The Biden administration still faces questions about how it will respond to Israel’s recent decision to ban UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinians. They may also have to address challenges from the International Criminal Court, which is mulling issuing an arrest warrant from Netanyahu. And Israel’s tit-for-tat conflict with Iran may continue, whether Biden wants it to or not.