U.S. policy now hinges on ‘concrete steps’ from Netanyahu in Gaza. Will Biden match his demands with actions and finally put conditions on America’s military support for Israel?
It’s a shame upon shame that it took the deaths of six foreigners in Gaza, humanitarian workers for the U.S.-based World Central Kitchen, to finally, maybe, shake President Biden to reconsider his acquiescence — his complicity — in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apocalyptic war there.
By the time the convoy from chef José Andrés’ organization was annihilated by an Israeli drone strike Monday — killing three Brits, a Pole, an Australian and a Canadian American, along with a Palestinian driver — nearly 33,000 Gazans were dead after six months of Israel’s pummeling, two-thirds of them women and children. More than a million more Gazans, half the strip’s population, have been displaced. Most of those refugees have targets on their backs, crowded as they are around Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which Netanyahu says is next in his sights despite Biden’s talk of “red lines.”
There are two more casualties of Netanyahu’s war. The first is the global goodwill toward Israel in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists from Gaza savagely murdered 1,200 Israelis and took more than 240 hostages, many of whom remain in Hamas’ hands. And the second: the international standing of the United States, given Biden’s seemingly unquestioning support to date of Israel’s right-wing government.
That support is no longer unquestioned, at least. Not since Biden’s reportedly tense call with Netanyahu on Thursday in which we’re told the president demanded that Israel take “specific, concrete and measurable steps” to alleviate civilian suffering and deaths in Gaza. U.S. policy hinges on Israel’s response, Biden told the prime minister. Also, Israel must agree soon to another hostage exchange with Hamas. For the first time, Biden called for “an immediate cease-fire.”
Still, so far Biden’s words remain just that, words — which the self-regarding Netanyahu will likely dismiss to survive atop his extremist coalition.
