America’s asymmetry

CHENNAI: It’s not clear exactly what US President Joe Biden realistically hoped to achieve by visiting Tel Aviv this week — so soon after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7, and the retributive response of the Israeli government. At a time when emotions were still raw on either side, and mass protests were taking place all over the Middle East, it was unlikely he would have succeeded in calming the troubled waters.

There were ostensibly two objectives to the mission. One was to showcase the US’s commitment to Israel after the Hamas assault. The White House had already reacted with great anger and affirmed its unqualified commitment to the defence of Israel.

In addition to all that, a presidential visit to Tel Aviv was felt necessary to demonstrate Biden’s resolve—perhaps to public opinion both in the US and Israel—and at the same time to warn off foes of the Jewish State.

The second was to ensure that the conflict in Gaza-Israel did not snowball, which would hurt America’s economic interests at a difficult time at home. For this Biden needed the cooperation of Egypt, Jordan, the Palestine Authority, and Saudi Arabia.

A summit of the leaders of the first three entities was hastily arranged in Amman. While the first objective was easily performed, the second was doomed to fail. Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza, killing hundreds of innocents, raised alarms worldwide as to the calamity brought upon the two million Palestinian civilians blockaded inside with no food, water, medicines, and electricity.

With protests flaring up in Middle Eastern capitals, it was unlikely that the leaders of these states would risk being seen heeding the American president’s suggestions at a time like this.

And when, even before Air Force One had taken off, the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza was bombed, killing 471 Palestinian patients, children, and women, the second part of the Biden mission was dead in the water. It became untenable for Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestine Authority, King Abdullah of Jordan and Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt to be seen conferring with the American President freshly after he had expended all his emotions in Israel, compared the Hamas killings with 9/11, and seconded Tel Aviv’s theory of who was responsible for the hospital bombing.

It’s not every day that an American President is stood up. It speaks of the depth of passions raging in West Asia right now as well as Biden’s loss of traction in the region.

By way of tangibles, the Biden mission did manage to secure a commitment from Egypt to allow aid convoys into southern Gaza through the Rafah crossing—but then again, subject to conditions set by Israel.

Other than that, there has been no outcome from the Biden visit that promises peace in the next few crucial months. The continued asymmetry of America’s approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict was yet again on show this week.

It’s not clear how exactly this serves the interests of peace in the region, or even America’s interests, or even Israel’s, let alone Palestine’s.

The only true words spoken from Washington this week have been from a little-known State Department official who resigned in protest against the US’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war: “Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor peace.

The fact is that blind support to one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”