American diplomacy in the Middle East and the Israeli war on Gaza are two sides of the same coin. Washington’s efforts to protect Israel while it commits war crimes in Palestine have embroiled it in a new war that threatens to engulf the entire region.
Since the Israeli military launched its bloody assault on Gaza a month ago, the Biden administration has sent its main naval strike force, including two aircraft carriers, to the Middle East to warn its critics and his allies. He also sent his top diplomat to carry out Israel’s orders in Arab capitals and to buy time for its military to “finish the job” in Gaza.
In his meetings with Arab officials, Secretary of State Antony Blinken brushed aside any criticism of Israel’s wartime conduct, which has killed hundreds of Palestinians and injured thousands every day. He repeated false official Israeli statements and rejected any talk of a ceasefire, thereby providing unconditional US support for Israel’s all-out war against Palestine.
But as Israel has stepped up its bombing of hospitals, schools, mosques and residential buildings, and continued its ground invasion of the densely populated strip, the Biden administration has turned its focus from war to future peace. .
On his third visit to the region last week, Blinken failed to contain the fallout from the war on Gaza or defuse anger and disappointment in Arab capitals. Arab ministers he met condemned Israel’s war crimes, expressing outrage at the growing death toll, which has surpassed 10,000 people.
Blinken has tried to distract from the war. He tried to convince Arab leaders to stop talking about a ceasefire and start talking about the desired “lasting peace” that would come from it. But his fanciful promise of peace has fallen on deaf ears in Arab capitals, who refuse to discuss “tomorrow,” at least in public, until the United States agrees to call for a cease. -immediate fire.
Blinken enjoyed a better reception at the Palestinian Authority (PA) headquarters in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. PA President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the US overtures, agreeing to take control of Gaza as part of a comprehensive post-war peace settlement.
It’s truly mind-boggling, both in terms of cynicism and credulity.
This cynicism stems from the PA’s collusion with the US-backed genocidal war on Gaza, where some 2.3 million Palestinians are struggling to survive a crippling blockade and intensive bombing by Israel. Although the Palestinian Authority has condemned Israeli war crimes in Gaza and led Arab diplomatic efforts at the United Nations, it has also suppressed all forms of Palestinian protest against the war.
Worse, as Israel has stepped up its military incursions into the occupied West Bank, including in the city of Ramallah, arresting thousands, the Palestinian Authority leadership has remained silent. And as violent Jewish settlers have intensified their attacks on Palestinian villagers, Abbas has been strangely indifferent.
Abbas’s gullibility lies in his blind belief that the Biden administration, complicit in the genocide in Gaza, is capable and willing to bring a just peace to the Palestinians. If only he could maintain calm in the West Bank a little longer, while Israel decimates Gaza – he believes – he could soon govern a Hamas-free Gaza.
What a farce!
The very idea of the Palestinian Authority returning to Gaza using Israeli warplanes and tanks to raze it to the ground is patently insane.
Abbas & co must be mistaken in thinking that Israel is spending blood and treasure to hand over the West Bank and Gaza to their incompetent regime. In fact, the Israeli government makes no secret of its intention to maintain overall control of the Gaza Strip indefinitely.
If they really believe that a victorious post-war Israel will help them establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, I have a bridge in China to sell it to them.
Why on earth would President Joe Biden devote his political capital, especially in an election year, to the creation of an independent Palestinian state? If his administration cannot rely on Israel to agree to a two-day or even two-hour humanitarian pause, whether to save lives or to save face, how on earth can it convince the government and the Israeli society to accept a two-state solution?
In reality, America will be hard-pressed to find a single Israeli party, much less a major party, willing to end illegal settlements and withdraw from the occupied territories in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. The fascists and fanatics who make up the Israeli unity government and who now hold an absolute majority in Parliament are thinking of new ways to expel the Palestinians, not reward them with their own state.
The best-case scenario, under current circumstances, would see America pressuring Israel to accept a half-state over the PA-administered half of the West Bank, in exchange for full Arab normalization and a million additional dollars in American aid.
On the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, around twenty years ago, President George W. Bush also proposed a “vision of a two-state solution” and developed, with the Europeans, a international roadmap to achieve this objective “the next day”. the war. And the result? Still the same bloody occupation, the same illegal settlements and the same siege, in addition to the eternal wars that have wreaked havoc in the region.
In truth, thanks to America’s unconditional support, there is no Israeli peace partner to engage with, today or “the day after tomorrow.” None. Nada. No Israeli De Gaulle to end the occupation, nor Israeli De Klerk to end its racist apartheid system.
Only with popular resistance and the direct involvement of the international community as a whole can Israel be forced – as France and South Africa were – to abandon its racist colonial project .