During the last half-century, the relationship between the US and
Israel evolved from Washington being Tel Aviv’s enabler and protector to
being a strategic partner.
The US has become the principal provider of the most advanced
military equipment and economic aid and has given Israel steady
political cover, including 46 vetoes in the United Nations Security
Council since 1973.
Every president since Richard Nixon - 10 of them - cast vetoes during their tenure. Israel has received more than $260bn from the US since 1971, in addition to many more billions given by private institutions and Israeli bonds.
Since the 7 October, Palestinian fighters' attack against Israeli military bases and settlements, the US has repeatedly and “
unreservedly”
endorsed Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza, which has resulted in
thousands of civilian victims, at a rate of 150 children killed per day,
and total destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure.
The US has given Israel steady political cover, including 46 vetoes in the United Nations Security Council since 1973
More than 8,300 Palestinians have been killed
and 22,000 injured so far, and more than 2,000 have gone missing. More
than two-thirds have been children, women, and the elderly.
During this mayhem and genocidal war,
the US has continued to lend its blind support to Israel, arguing that
it has the “right to defend itself” with no regard for international
humanitarian laws and conventions.
In addition, American media outlets and politicians, including
President Joe Biden, have peddled Israeli lies without any evidence,
like the debunked stories of decapitated babies, rapes, and the attempted extermination of Israeli Jews.
After Israel’s bombing of the Baptist hospital in Gaza, which killed 471 people, they repeated the well-worn Israeli lie of blaming Palestinians despite the overwhelming evidence showing Israeli culpability.
Ignoring the context
For three decades, the US has presented itself as an “honest broker”
trying to reach a political settlement in this conflict based on the
so-called two-state solution.
Yet it’s incontestable among observers and analysts that throughout
this entire period, the US has fully backed Israeli policies to dispossess the Palestinians and deny them their legitimate rights or even the minimum required for a political settlement.
In their response to recent events, the US and its European allies have deliberately ignored the context in which the attacks took place.
Since the current right-wing Israeli government came to power 10
months ago, it’s been trying to impose its vision of ending the conflict
by creating new facts on the ground. It would force the Palestinians to
choose one of three options: accept an apartheid system, leave, or be killed.
In 2023, Netanyahu’s extremist partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, were empowered
to carry out their plans in the West Bank. Smotrich, who infamously
declared that Palestinians don’t exist, has already expedited Israeli settlement construction, seeking to double the settler population in the occupied territories to one million people.
Extremists and settlers further accelerated their raids and invasion
of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound this year, threatening to impose tighter
entry restrictions
on Palestinians. In the three weeks prior to October 7, Israeli
incursion into Al-Aqsa became an almost daily event, punctuated by
aggressive behaviour and insults.
In the first nine months of this year, the Ben-Gvir-led security
forces in the West Bank targeted Palestinian activists for
assassination. They stormed refugee camps and villages, killing almost 200 Palestinians, including 27 children.
Meanwhile, more than 5,500 Palestinian prisoners are being held under
harsh conditions in Israeli prisons. This year, the extremist
government took away the few rights
the prisoners gained over decades of struggle. Among these prisoners
are 1,860 people currently held in arbitrary detention without charges.
Since 7 October, well over 1,000 Palestinians have been arrested across
the West Bank in addition to the more than 100 killed.
Compounding these long-standing injustices is the suffocating siege
imposed on Gaza over the last 16 years without any relief in sight.
While it was ignoring all of these provocations, the US continued to
pay lip service to supporting a vague two-state solution. The only deal
it tried to broker, however, was Israel-Saudi normalisation, while
totally ignoring the plight of the Palestinians.
Against this backdrop, Palestinian resistance groups saw no other option but to launch their 7 October operation.
Their stated goals were to force an end to the desecration of Al-Aqsa
mosque, stop Israeli military incursions into West Bank towns and
cities that have killed hundreds, drive a prisoner exchange, lift the
siege on Gaza, and send a strong message to the world that there would
be no peace or normalisation at the expense of Palestinian rights.
The final blow
The Palestinian surprise attack shattered the myth of the
invincibility of the Israeli army and the superiority of its
intelligence services. It shook Israel’s political and military class to
its core and fractured its society.
In their unrelenting support, western leaders have been trying to
boost Israel’s sagging morale. During the last two weeks, they provided
Israel with a seemingly unlimited supply of weapons to pursue its
ruthless war on Gaza. They enabled its policy of collective punishment
of Palestinians, half of whom are children.
Israel’s horrific bombing of Gaza has infuriated millions worldwide,
particularly in the Arab and Islamic world, threatening a global
backlash against the US
Within days, the US administration submitted a request to Congress
for $14.3bn in aid to improve Israel’s slumping economy. It also dispatched naval ships, aircraft carriers and advanced weapons systems, and even arms and soldiers to Jordan, to
deter other parties in the region such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran
and its regional allies in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, from lending their
support to resisting Palestinians.
Biden himself flew to Israel to personally declare his enthusiastic
support and even accidentally posted on Instagram a photo of himself
shaking hands with members of the US Delta Force deployed there.
The US has since expressed its shared goal with Israel to eliminate
the military capabilities of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other resistance
movements in Gaza. It has callously defended collective punishment
by seeking to inflict tremendous violence on Palestinians to “turn them
against Hamas” and permanently end the group’s rule in Gaza.
However, the US knows too well that such grand objectives entail
great risks and peril. Its experiences - and losses - in Vietnam,
Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq are just a few examples of the dangers of allowing a full-scale ground invasion against an indigenous resistance.
If the US directly joins Israel
in its war against the Palestinians or their allies, it would be very
difficult to contain a wider regional war that could spread to other
countries and ultimately undermine US interests.
Israel’s ongoing horrific bombing of Gaza has infuriated millions
worldwide, particularly in the Arab and Islamic world, threatening a
global backlash against western countries, especially the US.
The US’s full backing of Israel’s genocidal war and ethnic cleansing
of Gaza could be the final blow to the American-led global order.
Its resources are spread thin and US politicians may no longer continue providing a blank check to Ukraine to fight its war with Russia - yet another blatant display of American hypocrisy and double standards - or invest in containing China’s rise in East and Southeast Asia, a real peer competitor to US global power around the world.
Another war or military entanglement in the Middle East will not only
complicate America’s geopolitical calculus but could undermine its
stranglehold on the region and possibly beyond.
As Lenin once observed: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
We now live in such a time in which the future of the region could soon be determined for decades to come.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.