Trying to placate every faction of his increasingly divided Democrat Party, Joe Biden noted with one side of his mouth during his State of the Union address, “No one has a stronger record with Israel than I do.” Out of the other side of his mouth, he also said Israel had to do better to protect civilians and that he would send our military to create an “aid corridor” to Gaza, allowing the besieged area to get humanitarian aid — all while “no U.S. boots will be on the ground.”

The New York Times made it sound easy, quoting Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder: “General Ryder insisted on Friday that the military could build the causeway and stab it into the shore without putting any American boots — or fins — on the ground in Gaza. He said it would take up to 60 days and about 1,000 U.S. troops to move the ship into place from the East Coast and to build the dock and causeway. After the ship arrives offshore, it will take about seven to 10 days to assemble the floating dock and the causeway, a Defense Department official said.”

Yep, easy peasy — never mind that they’ll be bankrolled by Qatar, the nation housing several Hamas leaders. And never mind that our troops will be sitting ducks for whoever wants to take potshots at them. As Luther Ray Abel of National Review observed, “Biden is terrified of the pro-Palestinian elements in his party and, in his fear, is creating a situation whereby the U.S. taxpayers are almost certain to aid Hamas in its fight against our regional partner while having to watch U.S. men and women in uniform get left high and dry just off the coast of one of the most volatile few square miles in the world.”

Later in the evening, after the SOTU causeway declaration, Biden stepped in it again, telling congressional allies on a hot mic, “[Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi [Netanyahu], you and I are going to have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment.” When pressed about that utterance, Biden said it was just a common southern Delaware expression, and “He knew what I meant by it.” (This author happens to live in southern Delaware and can vouch that the expression is really not common here at all.)

There’s no doubt Biden wants a six-week ceasefire and the return of Israeli hostages by Hamas. But the issue is that Hamas uses these ceasefire periods to rearm and recruit more fighters — meaning that a ceasefire could come to a sudden end with a repeat of October 7. As Joel Gehrke at the Washington Examiner writes, “Hamas maintains that Israel must abandon its effort to destroy the terrorist organization, which has pledged to repeat the terrorist attacks perpetrated on Oct. 7 until the destruction of the state of Israel.”

A spokesman for Hamas was blunt: “Our top priority to reach a prisoner exchange deal is the complete commitment for the halt of aggression and an enemy withdrawal, and there is no compromise on this.” Doesn’t seem too negotiable to us.

That may be the red line for Hamas, but we learned Saturday where Biden’s line is: convincing Israel not to finish the job and root out militants from the southern Gaza city of Rafah. “You cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead,” Biden said of the mostly Hamas fighters Israel’s military has wiped out. As the Wall Street Journal editorializes, Israel agrees: “[Biden] wants fewer civilian casualties in Gaza, but so does Israel since the diplomatic consequences fall on the Jewish state, not on Hamas. That’s why Israel has held off on its Rafah campaign until it can put together a plan to let civilians find refuge to the city’s north.”

As for Israel, “We’ll go there [to Rafah],” Netanyahu said. “We’re not going to leave. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.” The Israeli leader also claimed that the two-state solution is something being imposed on his nation. “[The Israeli people] also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said. “That is something that they agree on.”

With enough red lines now to draw a tic-tac-toe board, the question isn’t one of whether Israel will continue to root out Hamas militants in Gaza. The contention is just how far a “temporary” solution will go when the possibility for mission creep is always there. Will a U.S.-built pier become the landing for our troops to enforce the peace?