Since the latest Middle East crisis started three weeks ago, moderate voices have been raised across the Arab world asking US President Joe Biden to take steps to reduce the chances of the war in Gaza widening into general human carnage.
The voices of wisdom from seasoned US Middle East and policy experts have also urged Biden to work to restrain Israeli military action in Gaza and preserve a path to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
However, the president, who once described himself as “a Zionist in my heart,” seems unwilling to listen to the message and has showed little sign of reining in Israel in implementing its policy of liquating the Palestinian question.
Indeed, Biden has been hugging Israel even closer than his predecessors, and by doing so he is pushing the Middle East into another disaster, probably bigger than the other calamities that have struck the region over more than seven decades.
One of Biden’s arguments in giving Israel unlimited US backing is that this will protect and boost Washington’s geostrategic assets that are increasingly being challenged in the Middle East.
In making the case for more money and weapons for Israel to aid its lethal war in Gaza, Biden has said that his request to the US Congress is to support a critical US partner and to fund America’s national security needs.
“It’s a smart investment that’s gonna pay dividends for American security for generations,” Biden declared in a televised speech on Thursday hours after he returned from Israel where he had granted “freedom of action” to its leaders.
The US has put its troops in the region on alert and has begun sending in munitions and military hardware. It has deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups in the Eastern Mediterranean in a strong show of solidarity with Israel.
Israel is already the largest beneficiary of US aid, having received approximately $158 billion in US taxpayer assistance over the 1946-2022 period, mostly in military obligations, according to a report by the US Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan agency.
Biden’s request for more funding and weapons for Israel is not expected to be met with any resistance in Congress, where Israel receives bi-partisan support and where its friends are ready to take decisive action to make sure it has what it needs to confront its Arab neighbours.
Of course, Biden’s commitment could be tested if Israel launches an incursion into Gaza, where the Palestinian group Hamas is headquartered, in a military operation that would compound the suffering already experienced by the Palestinians.
These have already been facing waves of indiscriminate Israeli bombardments in retaliation for the Al-Aqsa Flood attacks carried out by Hamas on 7 October.
With more than 5,000 Palestinians already dead and entire neighbourhoods destroyed by Israeli bombs, the only certainty is that Gaza will face devastating damage and more deaths if Israel launches a lengthy land invasion of the Strip.
Top US officials have made it clear that they “strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself.” This includes sharing Israel’s declared goal of destroying Hamas’ military and political infrastructure in Gaza and deterring groups such as the Lebanese Hizbullah from joining the conflict.
Israeli Defence Minister Yaov Gallant told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee that the campaign would have three main phases starting with a “ground manoeuvre” intended to destroy Hamas operatives and damage infrastructure in Gaza.
In a second phase, Israeli troops will “work to eliminate pockets of resistance,” he said, and the third and final step will be the “creation of a new security regime in the Gaza Strip” and the “removal of Israel’s responsibility for day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip.”
Gallant, who had earlier described the Palestinians as “human animals,” did not explicitly lay out the details of the war plans, but members of the Israeli security and political establishment were quoted by the UK Guardian newspaper as telling US diplomats that the eradication of Hamas would “require methods used in the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II”.
“A lot of innocent Germans died in World War II,” the US officials were told by their Israeli counterparts. They were also reminded of Japanese civilian deaths from the US atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Similar comparisons have been made publicly by Israeli officials.
Ostensibly, the Biden administration seems to embrace the objectives of the planned Israeli ground war on Gaza and is seeking to gather US public and world support for a plan that the Israelis claim aims to defeat and destroy Hamas.
This week Washington led Western efforts to torpedo resolutions by a global peace summit in Cairo calling for an immediate ceasefire and to resume efforts towards Middle East peace.
Instead, it pushed with its allies for green-lighting the Israeli retaliation against Gaza.
Indeed, the US influence is already shaping the way the assault on Gaza will be conducted, particularly by rejecting calls for de-escalation and a ceasefire to rein in Israel’s bloody assaults on Gaza that have already caused untold atrocities and suffering.
Biden’s taking sides with Israel shines a spotlight on the US strategy towards the Arab-Israel standoff as Washington confronts challenging power shifts in the Middle East that weigh on its regional interests.
In navigating this incendiary context and probing seven decades of US policy towards the Middle East, it is necessary to show how US involvement has always ended in disaster after disaster and pushed the conflict towards dangerous expansion rather than restraint.
US president Harry Truman recognised Israel officially just minutes after its creation in 1948 and built a special relationship with the newly founded Jewish state.
All US presidents since have made commitments to Israel’s security that have deepened Israel’s qualitative military edge over the Palestinians and all its Arab neighbours combined and have encouraged it to defy UN and other international resolutions on Palestinian rights.
Yet, all the US initiatives, including the “peace” and “normalisation” agreements it has sponsored between Israel and its Arab neighbours, have failed to deliver as the US has remained blind to Israel’s policies of expansion and supremacy.
If Israel’s looming Gaza onslaught ends in a humanitarian catastrophe and further chaos in the Middle East, the Biden administration will be responsible for giving Israel a free hand in achieving its retribution.
The perils of an Israeli Gaza invasion may also have profound regional impacts beyond the war. With so much at stake, the dramatic implications of a widescale ground offensive could change the Middle East dramatically.
The first casualty of a wider ground war is expected to be the hazy peace between Israel and the Arabs that various US administrations have nurtured. The invasion of Gaza would also wreck the normalisation, built on the so-called “Abraham Accords,” between Israel and its Arab neighbours in recent years.
While the détente will be put on the spot, voices of pragmatism, moderation, peace and reconciliation at broader and popular levels will be hard to find among the Arabs, who will be increasingly infuriated by the Israeli actions.
Most importantly, it will kill any hope for an independent Palestinian state, which is a key pillar of a viable framework for peace, stability, and security in the Middle East.
Increased death and destruction in Gaza and the defeat of Hamas may push Iran to enter the conflict, most likely through its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Contrary to what some commentators have written, claiming that Iran will exercise caution due to its domestic troubles, the Islamic Republic is bent on defending and supporting its Palestinian allies.
Moreover, if Iran helped to plot the attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October in order to sabotage the US-backed Israeli-Saudi normalisation, as many have suggested, Tehran will now continue its efforts to ensure that the mission is accomplished by exploiting the anger that has spread across the region.
Iran-backed Hizbullah has been exchanging fire with Israeli troops since the war on Gaza started. Further escalation on the Lebanese border would be extremely dangerous.
Hizbullah possesses more advanced weapons than Hamas, including the capacity to launch more accurate and powerful rockets that can reach all of Israel.
Shia militias in Iraq and Syria and the pro-Iran Houthis in Yemen have already been reactivated and have started hitting US-affiliated targets, including military bases and shipping.
All this amounts to the possibility of the US drawing closer to opening the door to a broader regional conflict.
However, the real toll of the Israeli aggression on Gaza remains the horrific Israeli blitzkrieg that has caused collateral damage and casualties and that will force most of the Strip’s 2.3 million people to flee their homes.
This will create a large displaced population, worsening the Palestinian ordeal and threatening to deepen the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the war with Hamas is “do or die,” while extreme-right politicians in his government have bragged that the outcome of operation “Iron Swords,” the name given to the Israeli war, will be “a smaller Gaza”.
But even if Israel deals Hamas’ political and security infrastructure a crippling blow, there is no alternative authority available to take its place. The Palestinian national movement will resist attempts to impose a puppet or alien authority to oversee Gaza.
The outcome is clear, and so is the cost: a genocidal incursion by Israel will lead to an exodus of refugees who will be evicted from their houses in Gaza. A forced transfer of the Palestinians outside the Strip will create a combustible situation that will trigger an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
While the Palestinians, who have been through the tragic experience of displacement and dispossession before, do not see evacuation as a choice, no Arab country is prepared to take refugees from Gaza, especially in the light of the worsening regional geopolitical and economic situations.
Yet, the Biden administration is acting in a manner that increases the risk by siding with Israel as it prepares to unleash its fire and fury campaign on Gaza.
Whatever the outcome of the standoff, Biden will be making a very bad miscalculation in the US Middle East policies by giving Israel a free rein.
His blind support for Israel comes with a high price tag attached, and it is wrecking the new Middle East order touted by his administration as a challenge to the US adversaries of Iran, China, and Russia.
As the war stirs regional tensions and increases resentment of the US among the Arabs, these three powers stand to benefit from Biden’s foolish investment which he claimed will counter their influences and bolster America’s leadership in the Middle East.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 October, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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