A UN Security Council voting on March 25 required an immediate and absolute peace between Israel and Hamas, and the United States abstained. ( In addition, the resolution called on Hamas to release its prisoners. ) For the first time since the start of the war, America has failed to use bilateral organizations like the UN to delegitimize Israel. The United States may have vetoed the decision, as it has done in the past. It made a decision not to. Our relationship with the Jewish state was undermined by the terrible decision, which also weakened Hamas extremists.
Just do n’t call it a change in policy. If you do, Biden and his team for international policy will grow irate. ” Our vote does not— I repeat—does not represent a shift in our policy”, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. When asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to abstain from a committee to Washington, Kirby responded,” The prime minister’s office seems to be indicating through public remarks that we apparently changed around. We have n’t”.
Therefore, according to the Biden administration, the departure of help at the United Nations is certainly a exit. Nor is Senator Chuck Schumer’s ( D., N. Y. ) new statement advocated for new votes, a new government in Israel, and labeled Hamas, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, and “radical right-wing Israelis” as equal “obstacles to serenity.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’s alert over the weekend that “any big military procedure” in Hamas’s next redoubt, Rafah, “would become a big mistake”? That must not be distinct from earlier management policy, either. After all,” I have studied the drawings”. It’s one soft range, we are supposed to think, from Biden’s attend to Israel and accept of Netanyahu on October 18 to Biden’s recent opposing demeanor toward Israel’s tactics, strategy, and elected leader.
Well, next. The irony of the Biden place is hardly surprising. These are the same people who claimed that the mayor’s years and storage are irrelevant because he is actually suggest to his staff and swears a lot, that inflation would be transitory, that unauthorized crossings on the southern border were annual, that America would stop al Qaeda and ISIS from recovering in Afghanistan, and that Vladimir Putin’s continued use of force would deter him from entering Ukraine. They would obviously pretend that their revolt against Israel, their inclination to a ceasefire that would allow Hamas remnants to survive, was something entirely different. Gasslighting is not just a pastime for Team Biden. It’s a lifestyle.
On one level, though, I sort of sympathize with John Kirby. To change a policy, you must have a policy. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the Biden administration has neither a coherent policy for the Greater Middle East nor a coherent Israel policy. Instead, the Biden administration has a wish list. The items on this list sound nice to liberal ears: Defeat Hamas, free the hostages, capsize Netanyahu’s coalition, end the war, jump- start the peace process. But the items are also numerous. They conflict with one another. They are n’t prioritized in any way.
A policy implies a strategy, an alignment of ends with means. Yet Biden’s end—the resolution of an irreconcilable conflict—is utopian. And his means—a Palestinian state—is worse than farfetched. A Palestinian state, if established under current conditions, would be a dictatorship that threatens the lives of everyone in its vicinity. A Palestinian state would not be a gain, but an error of galactic proportions.
To think that a Palestinian state would be peaceful and that Israel and Saudi Arabia would normalize is to believe. A ceasefire would leave Hamas’s remaining brigades intact, emboldening its leadership and its followers in the West Bank, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Hezbollah would be tempted to escalate its waning conflict with Israel if there was a ceasefire. A ceasefire would strengthen Iran and its proxies, including the Houthis. There is one way to restore security, reduce tensions, and promote regional integration: Allow Israel to prove its strength by ending Hamas as a coherent military force.
If only he bullies Israel into letting Hamas escape, that response might not be enough to satisfy the columnists who visit Biden in the Oval Office, flattering him with tall tales of historic accomplishments. It is without a doubt easier to accept that there are no tradeoffs and that the dangers of radical Islamist movements can be wished away by reciting the phrase “foreign policy for the middle class,” as Biden and his national security adviser Jake Sullivan do.
And yet, by privileging domestic politics over serious policy, Biden has found himself, Commander- like, chasing his own tail. Biden claims to support Israel, but he is making a desperate effort to acquaint himself with Michigan’s anti-Israel voter base. He also offers a$ 10 billion sanctions waiver for Iran, its militias, and the Houthis, while also offering to look elsewhere when proxy violence stops. He expresses his frustration with Netanyahu, but he does nothing during a visit by Hamas leaders to Tehran with Ayatollah Khamenei.
” In balancing U. S. interests and priorities”, writes my AEI colleague Danielle Pletka,” the White House and its allies in Europe will face two options: engage in a region ever more dominated by Iran and its proxies, or cede Iranian dominance, replete with a lethal nuclear weapons program. The choice should be obvious”. If it were clear to Biden and the anti-Bibi Democrats, whose dislike of Israel’s elected leader is blinding them to geopolitical reality, if only it were obvious. Absent a directed, sustained, and articulated policy of no daylight between the United States and Israel, the rift between America and her ally will widen and the world will grow more dangerous. Such is life with President Biden, amid a darkening international scene that, alas, has not changed one bit.
