With the Middle East spiraling in the wrong direction, with too many fresh graves in Israel and Palestine alike, with children maimed and killed in Gaza in staggering numbers, with anger and bigotry spinning away to poison hearts around the world, the last, best hope may be President Biden.
It may not be possible to end the Gaza war this year, establish a post-Hamas peace in Gaza and restart a process to give Palestinians the state they deserve. But if there is a path, it’s difficult to see who could blaze it other than Biden.
Biden may be the single most popular person in Israel today, and the United States has leverage as Israel’s most important ally and diplomatic protector. Biden’s forceful backing of Israel after the Hamas terror attack won him enormous gratitude from a people not much used to such unequivocal support. And now that he has accumulated this political capital, he should use it — albeit for a series of risky initiatives that don’t have much chance of success.
To his credit, Biden has tried to nudge Israel in this direction, as has Secretary of State Antony Blinken. They’ve been rebuffed. But too many lives are at stake in Israel and Palestine alike to accept the snub; they must push harder.
The first step Biden took was essential, moving two aircraft carrier groups to the region to deter Hezbollah and Iran from expanding the war. That is working, so far.
The debate in America has often focused on a cease-fire, but that seems to me the wrong question. I’m fine with Israel taking out Hamas’s military leaders or destroying tunnels in a surgical way, but not with it leveling large sections of Gaza. It’s true, as Israeli officials note, that Hamas hides behind civilians — but Israel has a responsibility to value Palestinian lives even if Hamas doesn’t.
For now, Israel is turning entire neighborhoods in Gaza to rubble. About 100 United Nations employees have been killed in Gaza along with more than 30 journalists — and more than 4,300 children, by the count of the Gaza Health Ministry, which is under the Hamas government but whose numbers have been regarded as generally reliable by the State Department and humanitarian agencies. The United Nations says that 1,350 children are missing and may be buried in the debris.
Israel of course has a right to defend itself and to fight Hamas. But war is not a binary choice. At one end of the continuum is complete disregard for civilians (reflected in the suggestion by a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, subsequently reprimanded, that nuclear weapons may be used in Gaza), and at the other is an intervention that is entirely surgical but perhaps less effective. Those are the trade-offs.
The Biden administration has already encouraged Israel to ratchet its assault on Gaza several notches toward the surgical end, by using smaller bombs and allowing humanitarian pauses. Biden should press harder. I’m skeptical that the Israeli Army can actually eradicate extremist forces from Gaza, so it seems to me that what’s unfolding there now — with American complicity as we supply Israel with bombs and artillery shells — is neither militarily promising nor morally sustainable.
What will historians say about us when they describe Gazan children screaming during surgeries because their neighborhoods were bombed flat and hospitals ran out of anesthetic?
Biden might give Netanyahu a copy of the new book “Conflict,” co-written by General David Petraeus, which includes a Petraeus memo from 2008 about Iraq with the principle “We cannot kill our way out of this endeavor.”
Looking ahead, the next initiative must be a major push by Biden for an Israeli-Palestinian peace. A peace process is not possible now, even if the war weren’t underway, because both sides lack credible leaders to get there — but perhaps it’s feasible to create conditions that will encourage the emergence of decent leaders after the war is over.
For starters, it’s imperative that Israel freeze settlements and rein in violent settlers, for they are a cancer on the region. To his credit, Biden has condemned “extremist settlers” and said that their attacks on Palestinians must “stop, now.” But he isn’t getting through to Netanyahu, who seems to believe that Biden may fume but ultimately will bow to his intransigence.
Maybe there is nothing more that Biden can do, particularly at a time when Israel feels so shattered and threatened, to persuade Netanyahu to rein in settlers and reduce civilian deaths in Gaza. But it’s worth trying, which means applying firm pressure and sending signals such as reopening the American consulate in Jerusalem, which traditionally dealt with Palestinian issues, and reinstating the State Department legal opinion that settlements violate international law. The United States could also abstain at the United Nations Security Council on a resolution calling for humanitarian pauses, instead of vetoing it as happened last time.
Israel will most likely have a new leader after the war; I’m hoping that person will recognize that the way to keep Israelis safe is a peace deal with Palestinians.
On the Palestinian side, one possibility is for Hamas to exchange hostages for Israeli prisoners, leading to freedom for Marwan Barghouti. He is a charismatic figure who has been called Palestine’s Mandela for his advocacy in recent years of unarmed resistance and calls for Jewish and Palestinian states to exist in peace side by side. But he is also called a terrorist, for earlier he advocated violence, and he is now serving several life sentences in Israel for murder. However one views Barghouti, polls suggest that he is the most popular Palestinian leader in both Gaza and the West Bank, and he just might be the person best able to unite Palestinians and negotiate seriously for a long-term peace.
All of this is extremely iffy and politically risky. But the present course is even riskier and morally suspect.
Children in Gaza are dying at the rate of about one every 10 minutes, so I ask again a question I posed in a column as the war started: “How many dead Gazan children are too many?”
People will search their consciences and answer that question differently. But Biden’s answer will matter most. He just might have the capacity — by saying “Enough” — to help end this war and construct a durable peace on the ashes left behind.