Relationship between the US and Israel on tiptoes

From the moment Hamas burst through the border fences and started its horrific onslaugt of murder, rape and hostage-taking, the United States has given Israel totally committed support, includihg hundreds of thousands of munitions to retaliate against the terrorist organisation. Joe Biden said Israel had every right to meet its objective of eliminating Hamas. Now eight weeks later, after more than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed including 6,000 children (according to Hamas), Biden and his administration officials are literally on tiptoes, trying to sound tough on Israel's side but desperate to stop the killing of civilians and destruction of property. So far, since the ceasefire came to an abrupt halt and the Israel Defence Forces renewed its attacks, there has been little sign of restraint on their part. IDF soldiers are moving into every part of Gaza and there are daily airstrikes. For Biden, it's a tricky time. He wants two things which are contradictory, an end to Hamas as rulers of Gaza, but with as little violence as possible. Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, said that if Israel continued to kill civilians it would suffer a strategic defeat. I'm not sure what he means by that. Killing civilians won't encourage the rest of the world to look on Israel with sympathy but is that equivalent to a strategic defeat? I don't think so. A strategic defeat would be if Israel admitted it had failed, pulled its troops out of Gaza and let Hamas get on with doing what it did before, running Gaza and threatening Israel with more attacks. And I seriously doubt that is going to happen. Meanwhile Biden and co seem to be crossing their fingers that Israel will wrap it all up so that the focus can switch to finding a new solution for the Palestinian people. I suspect we are a long way off that right now.