If the US wants to be humane, it won't 'rebuild' Gaza

• Published date: 26 May 2021
• Author: Jonathan S. Tobin
• Date: 26 May 2021
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the Middle East this week but his purpose is not, as he claims, to revive the dead-in-the-water peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Rather, it's to ensure that the truce holds. According to President Joe Biden, Blinken will do so while simultaneously reaffirming "our ironclad commitment to Israel's security" while also continuing "our administration's efforts to rebuild ties, and support for, the Palestinian people, and leaders, after years of neglect."

There's a lot to unpack in that sentence. Biden's words signaled a shot at the administration of former President Donald Trump's closeness with Israel and attempt to hold the Palestinian Authority accountable for its support of terrorism. It also reflected a policy shift to a more "even-handed" approach to the conflict, while at the same time also attempting to claim that its support for Israel is unshaken.

Any statement that seeks to reassure both the sector of his party's base that is anti-Israel and Americans who support the Jewish state can't be said to amount to much. That's especially true since the administration's foreign-policy priority until last week was its ongoing efforts to reach a rapprochement with Iran, which would enable Tehran to have even more resources to give to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad embedded in Gaza.

As Biden talks out of both sides of his mouth about the Middle East, it's clear that the one thing the administration is definitely intent on doing is to lead an international humanitarian effort to "rebuild"

Doing so will be a way for Biden to show that he means what he says about supporting the Palestinians in such a way as to get credit from the growing faction of leftist Democrats who falsely think that Israeli counter-terror strikes in Gaza are the moral equivalent of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck.

Biden clearly wants a policy that will appear to neither openly punish Israel nor reward Hamas. "Rebuilding" Gaza is, he thinks, the way to do it while advancing the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the 'West Bank' and Jerusalem. Blinken and the other foreign-policy establishment luminaries that staff his administration still believe a two-state solution is the only way to prevent future outbreaks of fighting.

The fundamental mistake here is not just the notion that America can maintain its alliance with Israel while also being good friends with a Palestinian Arab nationalist movement...