President Joe Biden of the United States is due to arrive in Israel today. The world waits with bated breath to see how Biden’s arrival today might help de-escalate the ongoing Israel-Hamas war from a broader regional conflagration. But the New York Times has described his visit as “an extraordinary” show of support and “solidarity with America’s closest ally in the Middle East, in a wartime trip to bolster the country’s resolve to eradicate Hamas but also to urge limits on what seems bound to be a casualty-filled ground invasion of the Gaza Strip”.
Also speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv Tuesday morning, US Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken, who himself has conducted two rounds of tours to the region, confirmed that Biden’s visit is to reaffirm Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security and receive a comprehensive brief on its war aims and strategy. Biden, Blinken said, “Will hear from Israel what it needs to defend its people as we continue to work with Congress to meet those needs”.
“The president will hear from Israel how it will conduct its operations in a way that minimises civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas,” Blinken added.
In other words, Biden is in the region today not to seek an end to the war, but to continue America’s decades-old one-sided approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He had already demonstrated that narrow-minded and dangerous approach by dispatching two warships to Israel in support of its relentless missile attacks on defenseless Palestinian citizens, including women and children, in Gaza and the West Bank, and against the small militia of Hamas fighters.
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We are horrified that Biden is not in the Middle East to seek an end to the ongoing war but to look for softer ways of deepening it. But we urge Biden to discard that approach and embrace the nobler one of finding more practical ways to bring about a ceasefire and an end to the conflict altogether.
It is true that the immediate trigger of the current war was Hamas’ attacks on Israel on Saturday, October 7, killing over 1,000 Israelis and taking over 100 of them captive. We do not condone that provocation, but the world cannot remain forever blind to the root causes of that attack: the 16 years of total blockade of Gaza, the encroaching Israeli illegal settlements on Palestinian lands, the provocative attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque by rightwing Israelis, and the killing of Palestinians by Israeli civilian settlers, not just by Israeli soldiers.
Add to these the daily horrors of Israeli occupation that Palestinians have suffered for nearly 80 years. In fact, various international organisations, including not a few United Nations agencies, have described the occupied territories of Palestine in both Gaza and the West Bank as the “world’s largest open-air prison”. Other informed observers, including global human rights organisations like Amnesty International, have described the Israeli occupation of Palestine as no different from an apartheid regime.
As Biden arrives in Tel Aviv today, however, the situation in Palestine is far, far worse than an open-air prison or apartheid regime. Israel has been indiscriminately bombarding Gaza non-stop for the past 10 days, firing 6,000 missiles in just six days. As a result, more than 3,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed, among them over 1,000 children and 400 women. More than 12,500 Palestinians have also been wounded, with many of them in critical condition.
In addition, Israel has tightened its complete blockade of Gaza—a small parcel of land that is no more than 25 kilometers long and 7 kilometres wide—allowing no passage of any refugees or relief materials. It has cut off the supply of water, food, electricity and fuel and bombarded more than 115 healthcare facilities, including those manned by United Nations (UN) agencies or Red Cross affiliates, killing many health workers and caregivers. Just yesterday, Israeli missile strikes on Al Ahli Arab Hospital left more than 500 civilians dead, many of them patients and health workers.
On top of that, it has deployed white phosphorus, a deadly chemical weapon that poses grave risks to civilians. If any of these had been done by any nation other than Israel, it would be called war crime, which indeed they are, regardless.
Thus, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the West Bank today can only be imagined. Following Israel’s order for 1.1 million Gazans to evacuate from northern Gaza to the south, even as it continues to bomb both Gazas, more than one million people have since been displaced from their homes, according to the UN, but still with practically nowhere to go.
Also, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that it needs urgent access to Gaza to deliver aid and medical supplies, as it warns of a long-term humanitarian crisis. Moreover, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN’s main humanitarian agency for Palestine, has expressed grave concerns over “dehydration and water-borne diseases”, due to the collapse of water and sanitation services, warning that “people will start dying without water.”
This is the real situation President Biden will meet on the ground in Gaza. Thus, for humanitarian grounds alone, Biden should be calling for a ceasefire and an end to the war. He can support Israel all he wants, but he also has an obligation to end the suffering of Palestinian civilians, millions of whom do not associate with Hamas, as Biden himself has repeatedly said over the past week. To void that obligation is to void the moral force on which the United States was founded.
More than that, however, Biden also has an obligation to prevent a regional and global conflagration. The chief lesson of US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, following the catastrophic events of 9/11 on American soil, and of Libya and Syria, is that they led to the proliferation of copycat insurgent groups around the world, including in many European capitals. These unfortunate developments have receded in the past few years, and rightly so.
As President Biden meets leaders of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Palestine during his visit, he must do all in his power to avoid a return to the recent past.
