Biden stuck between a rock and hard place over Israel

He sent the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, to talk to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, for a “humanitarian pause” in Israel’s operation in Gaza.

The United States President Joe Biden is in a bind over his Israel policy.
Biden expressed solidarity with Israel within days of Hamas’ attack and also supplied Israel with fresh weapons.

But he is unable to convince the Israeli leadership to stop its operation in Gaza that has killed thousands of people.

He sent the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, to talk to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, for a “humanitarian pause” in Israel’s operation in Gaza.

But Netanyahu categorically rejected his proposal.

There is rising global outrage over the Israeli action as scores of Palestinians are dying each day.

The US is now confronted with the possibility of the war expanding into a regional conflict if more people die.

Biden is also facing mounting domestic pressure from within his Democratic Party and the American electorate, especially the young voters.

The incumbent President is trailing Donald Trump, the former Republican President and his likely challenger, in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, recent polls indicate.

Biden is losing by four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Only in Wisconsin, he is ahead of Trump by two points, a new poll by the New York Times and Siena College have found.

On October 7, Hamas mounted a surprise and unprecedented brutal attack on Israel killing 1,400 people and abducting over 200 people as hostages.

Netanyahu has insisted that there will be no pause in Israeli action unless the hostages are freed. He has also vowed to eliminate Hamas. But in the process, he has so far killed nearly 10,000 Palestinians.

Israel has also cut off water and electricity connections and supply of food and other essentials to Gaza, causing a catastrophic situation in the small Palestinian enclosure on the Mediterranean coast.

An earlier attempt by Brazil and several other countries to pass a resolution at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) calling for immediate ceasefire, was vetoed by the US.

Subsequently, a resolution was passed in the UN General Assembly, with overwhelming support, that called for a humanitarian pause in the Gaza operation by Israel.

Though initially, the support for Palestine in western countries was subdued as a large number of people were still coming to terms with Hamas brutality in Israel, that has now begun to fade and has been overtaken by Israeli action in Gaza.

In recent weeks, massive rallies and demonstrations have been held in Washington and other cities of America and Europe in support of the Palestinians.

In several US college campuses, students have walked out of their class to show solidarity with Palestine and demand an immediate ceasefire.

The Lebanon-based Shiite militant organisation Hezbollah, has threatened to enlarge its current fight at the Israel-Lebanon border to a full-fledged war if Israel continues its operation in Gaza.

This has brought added pressure on the US which had already stationed two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean as a deterrent to ensure that Iran and other countries don’t join Hamas and turn it into a regional conflict.

Such a conflict will stretch the US military to the extreme as it is already engaged in supplying Kyiv with weapons and intelligence in its war with Russia in Ukraine since February 2022.

The US armed forces have also been kept on their toes in the Taiwan Straits. The situation there has remained tense because of China’s regular coercive military drills around Taiwan in response to senior American leaders and officials visiting the island. The tensions are likely to rise, as Taiwan holds its Presidential elections early next year.

Therefore, the US would not like to get involved in a major conflict in the Middle East at this juncture. The possibility of a wider regional conflict has also alarmed several countries, including India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been holding regular talks with Arab leaders about the situation in the region.

On Monday he spoke to the Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and expressed concern about a wider conflict.

India is heavily dependent for its oil and gas from the region and has over nine million Indians living and working in the Gulf countries.

A regional conflict will be disastrous for India and most other countries as it could lead to a disruption in oil supplies and spike in oil prices.

This in turn could lead to rising inflation in most countries that are already suffering from the effects of the lock-down of the pandemic and the Ukraine war.

Observers say Israel is like “an albatross around Biden’s neck,” -- meaning a heavy burden that he finds difficult to get rid-off.

Though Biden is known as one of the most ardent supporters of Israel among the American Presidents, part of his problem to act tough against Netanyahu comes from his support within the US.

The Israeli Prime Minister has huge support among Evangelical Christians in America, the core base of the Republican Party. Any attempt to ignore Israel would raise strong response from his opponents and charges of abandoning Israel.

As Biden grapples with his problem, the danger of a larger conflict continues to hang over the Middle East.