Biden in ‘Catch 22’ position... can he call Netanyahu’s bluff - EDITORIAL

Israel’s war against Palestinians in Gaza continues into its second week in all its ferocity. Jerusalem is experiencing its worst unrest in years. Hundreds of Palestinian protesters have been wounded in clashes with Israeli police; thousands have lost their homes and made refugees all over again. 

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said 212 people had been killed and 1,400 others injured since violence flared last week, in what has become the most serious Israeli-Palestinian confrontation in years. 61 children and 36 women are among the dead, the ministry added.

Violence has surged into the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Today Arab communities inside Israel are staging demonstrations which are being met with violence by the Israeli police who illegally occupy Palestinian territories and suppress the Palestinian people.

After eight days of fighting, US President Biden has voiced support for a halt in hostilities. Pope Francis has spoken out against atrocities being committed against the people of Palestine. But Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the call of US President, the Pope and calls from the world at large to end the fighting, vowing to continue strikes in Gaza.

Despite Israel’s rebuff however, BBC reported the US again blocked a UN Security Council statement calling for a cessation of violence. The conflict, as mentioned before, now in its second week shows little sign of ending. So, how does Israel, covering a land area of 22,145 sq km and a population of 9.053 million buck the world’s sole super power?

The answer is that both the Republican and Democratic parties in the US have expressed “unequivocal” (Republican party platform 2016) or “ironclad” (Democratic party platform 2020) support for Israel including the liberal doses of aid paid to it year-in and year-out. 

Since 1985, the Congressional Research Service in its report reveals the United States has provided nearly US $ 3 billion in grants annually to Israel, with Israel being the largest annual recipient of American aid from 1976 to 2004 and the largest cumulative recipient of aid ($146 billion, not inflation-adjusted). In the fiscal year 2019, the US also provided $3.8 billion in foreign military aid to Israel. 

The report adds, for many years, US economic aid helped subsidize a lacklustre Israeli economy, but since the rapid expansion of Israel’s high-tech sector and overall economy in the 1990s, (sparked partially by US-Israeli scientific co-operation), Israel has been considered a fully industrialized nation. The US military aid also has helped Israel build its domestic defence industry, which now ranks as one of the top global exporters of arms.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) fact sheet of March 2020; from 2015 to 2019, Israel was the 8th largest arms exporter worldwide, accounting for 3% of world arms deliveries.
Today, the incumbent US President faces an uncomfortable paradox, his interim US National Security Strategy calls for the United States to defend and protect human rights in its foreign policy and to lead in restoring a rules-based international system. 

However, his strategy also pledges to maintain an ironclad commitment to Israel’s military aid. 
A contradiction in terms with Biden’s declared policy objectives, such as a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and Israel’s continuing de facto annexation of the West Bank, home demolitions, evictions, and destruction of entire Palestinian neighbourhoods and communities.

Leading progressive Democrats are calling on Biden to rethink his policy toward Israel and though some Democrats from within the progressive wing of the Democratic party have become more vocal about conditioning, or even cutting foreign aid to Israel, they do not form a majority in the party. It appears Biden is caught in a ‘catch 22 position’ and Netanyahu is exploiting this weakness. 
Has the US in fact created its own ‘Frankenstein Monster’ in the Middle East? Today that monster appears to be challenging its master.