On Oct. 27, three weeks into Israel’s punishing counterattack in Gaza, top Biden officials privately told a small group assembled at the White House what they would not say in public: Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington denied claims that Israel Defense Forces hit targets with insufficient intelligence, saying the IDF is committed to “international law” and “applies a thorough legal process in the selection of targets and invests significant resources to minimize harm to civilians.”

This article, based on interviews with 20 administration officials and outside advisers, examines how Biden, more than five months after the Oct. 7 attacks, has found himself deeply entangled in a war he does not want and that threatens to become a defining element of his tenure. His allies privately acknowledge that it has done him significant damage domestically and globally and could easily become his biggest foreign policy cataclysm.