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NEW DELHI – One month later The Gaza war, President Biden’s unwavering support of Israel’s leadership even as the Palestinian civilian death toll rises, poses risks This will cause lasting damage to Washington’s reputation in the region and beyond, Arab leaders and analysts say, warning that the US’s perceived acceptance of attacks on refugee camps, hospitals and homes could shake American influence for years to come.
Anger over the campaign’s huge civilian support is increasingly directed at the United States, not just Israel, and was a constant source of tension during Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trips to the Middle East and Asia last week. Prime ministers and diplomats have admonished him over Israel’s actions. Many argue that the attacks are facilitated by U.S. weapons and that efforts to push for “humanitarian pauses” rather than a permanent ceasefire are a recipe for continued violence against non-combatants.
“The entire region is sinking into a sea of hate that will shape future generations,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who spoke alongside Blinken in Amman. He called on Washington to end Israeli attacks on civilians. “The United States is playing a leading role in these efforts. And she and all of us bear the very heavy responsibility of ending this catastrophe.”
Blinken’s talks with Israeli leaders have also been tense, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top lieutenants giving little heed to U.S. concerns about civilian safety and claiming that Hamas operatives are hiding among innocent bystanders in Gaza. Even in Tokyo, foreign ministers held contentious talks over the U.S. handling of the Gaza crisis at a meeting of nations that normally support the United States, even as the European Union’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell directed his greatest ire at his German counterpart They should side with the US instead of supporting Borrell’s efforts to call more forcefully on Israel to stop its offensive. French President Emmanuel Macron later broke with the US position and called for a ceasefire.
As massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations took place around the world, hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia, Pakistan and elsewhere targeted Israel and its American backers, putting the death toll at over 11,000 Palestinians, many of them children, according to the organization The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip.
Biden administration officials are aware of the challenge they face as they balance supporting Israel and the heavy civilian casualties in Gaza. Officials say they are confident that the long-term impact on the United States will be less if Israel’s response ends quickly – for example, by removing the top Hamas leadership. There is also hope that incidents of unintentional deaths and injuries will decline as bombing raids are replaced by ground operations, even as Blinken expresses the urgency of keeping civilians safe.
U.S. concerns about declining influence in the Middle East stretched back long before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, but the current situation is likely to compound and exacerbate the fallout, analysts say . And the close ties between the United States and Israel over the Gaza crackdown have left Arab leaders unwilling to appear to be doing Washington a favor.
“What the Americans are doing now, this policy, is harming them. “At least 1.3 billion people in the world will hate them,” said General Abbas Ibrahim, a former senior Lebanese official who was involved in negotiations to allow foreign nationals to leave the country those stuck in the Gaza Strip. “And it’s not just about Muslims anymore. People are demonstrating all over the world.”
He said he relayed this bluntly to U.S. officials who traveled to Beirut in recent days as part of diplomacy aimed at averting a larger regional conflict. They “didn’t respond,” he said. “That is their policy. But they are wrong.”
Anger at Washington has given Russia and China an opportunity to portray themselves as defenders of the Palestinians, bolster their image in developing countries and use their propaganda channels to reinforce the connection between the United States and Israeli actions in Gaza. Moscow hosted senior Hamas leaders last month, drawing praise from the organization and condemnation from Israel.
For a world already divided over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Gaza crisis provides fertile ground for those seeking to usurp it that Western nations value the deaths of white Christian Ukrainians more than the deaths of non-white Muslims Near East.
“Something is happening in terms of responding to this crisis that is unlike anything I can remember in recent years, perhaps even as far back as the Gulf War and other episodes of U.S. policy in the Middle East,” said Suzanne Maloney, director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.
“There is a feeling” that there is a “double standard in terms of victims” in developing countries, she said – an unfair perception, she added, given that Russia invaded a weaker neighboring country that poses no security threat depicts what has led to the deaths of Ukrainian civilians as Israel responds to an ongoing threat from Hamas following an attack.
Still, the consequences of the war have left U.S. officials in an untenable position. Many privately admit they are uncomfortable with Israel targeting Hamas positions within civilian groups. Blinken has repeatedly expressed publicly that it pains him to see images of Palestinian children being pulled from the rubble – something the father of two young children also mentions in his closed-door meetings with other top diplomats, officials say.
And over the course of his travels in recent days, he has sharpened his tone considerably as Netanyahu slowly advanced his efforts to ease the humanitarian disaster.
“Far too many Palestinians have been killed. Far too many have suffered in recent weeks, and we want to do everything we can to prevent harm from coming to them,” Blinken said Friday in New Delhi at the end of a nine-day trip that stopped in eight countries and the West Bank .
Earlier in his trip, when Blinken met with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv, he told them that there could not be another week of carnage like the one that had just happened, in which dozens of refugees died as their camps were closed in bombings, dwindling supplies of food and water and communications disruptions preventing ambulances from reaching the injured.
Prolonging civilian suffering risks radicalizing young Palestinians and increasing the likelihood of a regional war if Iran and its proxy forces feel the need to respond, according to U.S. officials.
But the government faces a complicated task in how to publicly frame its message to the Israelis, in part because it does not want to appear as if it is withholding support from an ally in its moment of need. “The real work of diplomacy happens not in public statements but behind the scenes,” Maloney said. “We’re at a point where people are responding to public rhetoric rather than the results of private advocacy.”
The Israeli government says attacks on camps, ambulances and areas near hospitals target Hamas operatives or infrastructure. U.S. officials say they are assisting Israeli intelligence in informing them of these attacks, but they have pushed its leaders to change their calculations about how many civilian deaths are acceptable in exchange for each high-value Hamas target. Israel tolerates far greater civilian deaths than the United States, according to U.S. officials who have discussed the issue with the Israelis.
But no matter how hard the Biden administration pushes Israel, the White House is unlikely to exonerate itself from blame for its most divisive actions on the battlefield, analysts said, citing images of the U.S. hard embrace. President Netanyahu announced his visit to Israel shortly after the Hamas attack.
“People in the Arab world and the Global South are to some extent drawing a line between the destruction of Gaza and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s support of the president,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies use the term “Global South,” which refers to many countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and the Middle East. Asia and Africa.
“There is a way that the United States is tied to what the Israelis want to do, whether the United States wants to do it or not,” he said.
As protests flare around the world and some countries withdraw their ambassadors from Israel in protest, frustration extends far beyond the immediate region. In Malaysia, for example, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told a pro-Palestinian rally last month that the invasion of Gaza was the “peak of barbarism.”
His response was an attempt to shore up support for Islamists at home, but also reflects popular sentiment in Malaysia, where perceptions of Israel and the United States are at an “all-time low,” said Bridget Welsh, an attorney-at-large University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute-Malaysia.
The Biden bear hug is not just symbolic, officials say, and the decision to unwaveringly support Israel comes from above. Even as Biden’s Democratic coalition becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the extent of Palestinian losses, he faces little pressure from Congress to change course, officials familiar with the situation say.
Nor is it obvious that the United States has influence to stop the Israeli attack, despite being Israel’s largest military supporter. The Biden administration assumes Israel already has a sufficient arsenal to achieve its goals in Gaza, officials said. That means Israel would likely continue its attack even if U.S. military aid were stopped immediately. In the event of a two-front war, US aid would become more important.
Senior administration officials say Washington’s role is sometimes not to be loved but to be effective. During Blinken’s journey – his second visit to the region since the crisis began — Israeli officials urged U.S. diplomats to urge Arab leaders to give them space. Arab leaders, in turn, told Americans that unless they got Israelis to pay more attention to humanitarian concerns, outrage among their own people would grow.
Neither side expressed appreciation for U.S. policy – but they also said they believed Americans were the only interlocutors who could exert effective pressure on the other side.
“The power of America is measured not by how it begins,” Alterman said, “but by how it ends.”
Rebecca Tan in Singapore and Liz Sly in Beirut contributed to this report.
Israel-Gaza war
Israeli tanks surrounded crowded hospitals in Gaza City on Friday amid explosions and shells falling. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is not trying to “occupy Gaza,” marking a change in tone from his earlier comments that set off alarm bells in the Biden administration. Understand what is behind the Israel-Gaza war.
Hostages: According to official figures, Hamas militants kidnapped around 239 hostages in a well-organized attack. Four hostages – two Americans and two Israelis – have been released as families remain hopeful. A released Israeli hostage told of the “spider web” of the Gaza tunnels where she was held.
Humanitarian aid: The Palestinian Red Crescent said it received over 370 trucks of food, medicine and water into the Gaza Strip through the Egyptian Rafah border crossing. However, the PRCS said there is still no approval to import fuel to run the enclave’s hospitals, water pumps, taxis and more.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has a complicated history and its rulers have long been at odds with the Palestinian Authority, the U.S.-backed government in Gaza West Bank. Here is a timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.