Chicago – March 27, 2024
From the start, the administration urged the Israelis to consider proportionality in their response to Hamas. Israel heard it and went ahead with one of the most extensive bombing campaigns in this century against a population of about 2.2 million people that, by Israel’s own estimates, contained about 30,000 Hamas militants. By one January estimate, more than half of the buildings across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.
The U.S. administration counseled Israel against a large ground invasion of Gaza, advising it to take a narrower, targeted approach aimed at eliminating Hamas militants and infrastructure. The Israeli government held lots of long meetings with U.S. officials — and then went ahead with a ground invasion.
The Biden team urged a humanitarian pause, but got only a brief one when it was able to get the Qatari government to broker a hostage exchange.
After initial operations wound up, American officials told Israeli officials that what was done in the north of Gaza could not be done to the south. Yet after telling people to move to the south to get out of harm’s way, Israel then proceeded to bomb it in a manner that Biden himself admitted is “indiscriminate.”
The United States has repeatedly pressured Israel to make greater efforts to protect innocent civilians, but to little avail. Now it has been counseling against an invasion of Rafah, the city nestled close to Egypt where more than 1 million Palestinians have huddled together. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to invade Rafah, whether another hostage deal is made or not.
Washington has warned that after the war there should be no Israeli seizure of land in Gaza and no new Israeli occupation of the territory. The Israeli government’s plans are to do both.
The result is that American policy on the Gaza war now appears hapless, ineffective and immoral. The image of U.S. officials wringing their hands about civilian casualties while providing ever-more weapons is grotesque. The image of a president of the United States mumbling words such as “indiscriminate” and “over the top” to describe Israel’s bombings suggests weakness and passivity.
Part of the problem is that in trusting the Israeli government, Biden is trusting Netanyahu, an exceptionally clever politician who knows how to handle American presidents expertly and has done so for decades. This time, Netanyahu has outsmarted, outmanoeuvred and outplayed Biden.
