Israel's Fait Accompli in Gaza and the Dilemmas of the Biden Administration

When it comes to global politics, a very common example of intellectual laziness is the immediate resort to terms like the “big picture” and “deep circles” to make sense of events. In so-called analyses based on such expressions, which lack any analytical quality, it is told or written that at the end of the day, all of humanity has a passive role and cannot go beyond being an “extra.” In these analyses, decorated with familiar conspiracy theories, the world is sometimes governed by a few “families,” sometimes by Freemasons, sometimes by Jews, sometimes by Israel, and sometimes by the US. Those collaborating with these subjects are in the position of a “puppet,” while others are “extras.” Of course, as in every legend, a certain amount of reality is harnessed to serve the main story. US-Israel relations have also become the most famous and beloved subject of such so-called analyses, where sometimes the US is depicted as the puppeteer and Israel as the spoiled child, or where Israel is the true game-maker holding the strings in the background, and the US’s advanced military apparatus acts like a robot that only receives commands.

HAS BIDEN BEEN ABLE TO BRING BACK US LEADERSHIP?

Such so-called analyses had experienced significant difficulties and retreated during the Barack Obama administration, which had an unpleasant and fluctuating relationship with Israel; however, they had risen again, at least outside the US, when it came to the unconditional support for Israel—perhaps the only area where Donald Trump, seen as an anti-establishment politician by his base in the US, clashed the least with established US politics.

Of course, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and the Evangelicals in his cabinet also provided new content for these analyses. Then, Biden became an appreciated option by Americans who wanted to get rid of the reckless Trump, just like the French rushing to Emmanuel Macron—who would later be clearly understood to be a kind of charlatan—in the second round against the bogeyman of Marine Le Pen; and in fact, Biden’s foreign policy rhetoric of “reasserting US leadership” could only be tested so far by Russia’s attempt to invade Ukraine.

Joe Biden’s promise to reassert US leadership was a promise that was highly doubtful to be realized in the face of the limits and internal contradictions of the Euro-Atlantic hegemony, which is facing serious challenges, and today, looking specifically at the Ukraine crisis, there is a kind of “stalemate” for everyone. While the Russian economy is taking a heavy blow, Ukraine is facing shortages of troop reserves and ammunition in the face of the prolonged war, and the West is much more reluctant regarding aid to Ukraine compared to the first months of the war; even Zelensky, in the latest Time magazine, has begun to believe that he is the only Ukrainian who believes in victory and struggles for it, in my own analogy, a kind of Last of the Mohicans.

DILEMMAS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION

In short, when Hamas attacked Israel and Israel attacked Gaza with unprecedented violence, the Biden administration did not yet seem very successful in re-establishing US global leadership, other than the fact that Russia was stuck in a kind of quagmire, no more so than in Ukraine. It is also obvious that the Biden administration has not been able to develop a new initiative in the Levant, other than the Abraham Accords process inherited from the Trump administration, which it is busy rolling back many of its domestic and foreign policy actions.

When Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press conference broadcast live in Israel following the Hamas attacks, “I come before you also as a Jew,” he was also giving the impression of a Biden administration converging on the unconditional support policy of the Trump era. However, the Biden administration was also under pressure from the Bernie Sanders-A.O.C. “leftism,” which is increasingly effective internally and would seem quite bland from here or any orthodox framework.

Within the Democratic Party that Biden leans on, this self-proclaimed movement, which can be likened at most to “left-liberal” circles in our country, had come to the fore more with the “Occupy!” movements—of which our Gezi protests were also a part, though it certainly had its own unique dynamics—and perhaps raised its most “anti-establishment” looking opposition from there. While it is a fact that even Obama was called a “socialist” in the US press, there is nothing surprising in them being called this as well, but they are also called “progressives.”

The analysis of this movement is of course not possible in a few sentences, but it is certain that despite all its limitations, they raise a different voice in the two-party US politics and offer a kind of representation opportunity for Americans of different ethnic origins, especially those described as “people of color.” As a matter of fact, on the other hand, in terms of the Democratic Party being the main owner and more consistent defender of the neoliberal globalization project, it has a relationship with Jewish capital groups, including the Israel lobby in the US, that does not make one miss the Republicans.

After all, Israel’s “right to exist” is, in a sense, an “above-party” issue for the US. However, it is indisputable that no matter what it does, the Biden administration cannot hold a candle to the Bush and Trump administrations in terms of giving Israel a “blank check.” Finally, there is the fact that while it has a voter base with different opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, it will enter the re-election race next year against a strong candidate like Trump.

ISRAEL WILL TRY TO ADVANCE AS LONG AS THE CONJUNCTURE IS IN ITS FAVOR

It was not expected that Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which seems likely to drag on, would not bring these internal contradictions of the Biden administration to light. While the Benjamin Netanyahu administration is squeezed by three separate corruption cases at home and shaken by the mass resistance and protests shown by the Israeli public against the much-debated judicial reforms, the Hamas attacks, which first landed like a very heavy, prestige-shattering punch, not only shelved Netanyahu’s short-term problems for now but also gifted the Israeli far-right a much more suitable environment for their desires to grind Palestine into dust through new settlements and eventually push all Palestinians out of Palestine or destroy them in a phased manner.

Even Macron’s criticism of Israel by stating that there is no legitimacy in killing civilians hits Netanyahu’s harsh tone of “You cannot teach us morality” and bounces back, forcing Macron to apologize to Netanyahu by saying, “I did not mean to say that Israel is deliberately killing civilians.” It is not difficult to predict that Israel will want to advance in this conjuncture until the conjuncture turns against it. Here, this turn, of course, includes the jingoistic moment in Israeli domestic public opinion dissipating as the war drags on, as much as the international conjuncture.

ISRAELI MAXIMALISM, POST-HAMAS GAZA AND THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

While representatives of the Israeli far-right in the government voice their goals of bringing Hamas to its knees or wiping Hamas out, some do not refrain from claiming that this is “synonymous with wiping out Gaza.” On the other hand, for example, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh argues that “Hamas cannot be erased as long as it is an idea,” and that it cannot be erased not only in Gaza but also in other parts of Palestine.

He also underlines that Hamas members are not only in Gaza. It is obvious that in the face of the maximalist position of the Netanyahu government in Israel and the Israeli far-right, Biden will make the “restraint” call we are now used to hearing and will try to put the “two-state solution” back on the table again and again, even if only at the level of rhetoric.

It can be easily predicted that those with maximalist positions in Israel will have difficulty maintaining this position as the war drags on and will gradually focus on what kind of authority should be established in Gaza as soon as a military gain deemed sufficient is achieved, which is also discussed in Israel’s internal intelligence reports.

Meanwhile, it is also necessary to consider that the Palestinian Authority, which declared through Shtayyeh again on October 30 that they would not accept proposals to take over the administration after a possible Israeli victory in Gaza on the grounds that it would give the impression of “as if they were traveling on an Israeli F-16 or Merkava tank,” announced through The New York Times about ten days later, this time through the mouth of Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh, that it is “open” to a kind of governing role in post-Hamas Gaza “if the US commits itself to a fully matured two-state solution and pushes in that direction.”

Since there are no politicians of the Yitzhak Rabin or Shimon Peres type in Israel’s administration today, it is not difficult to foresee that such expectations will not be realized without major conjuncture changes that would require a change of government in Israel.

THE LIMITS OF DIPLOMACY

Traditional International Relations literature attaches great importance to diplomacy because it offers the capacity to provide solutions without abandoning peace. However, despite this, it is not the case that most major problems are solved without conflict. While the liberal international order, which constitutes the superstructure of classical international law norms, continues to wound consciences by maintaining and deepening inequalities, let alone gaining consent among nations extending from central countries to peripheral countries and especially among lower social classes, the extent to which classical diplomatic methods based on these norms will be effective is unfortunately highly doubtful. In addition to Israeli government officials who do not hesitate to happily voice the concept of “Nakba,” used in reference to what Palestinians have experienced since 1948, as the Gaza Nakba or catastrophe for the military operations carried out today, for example, Daniella Weiss, one of the senior leaders of the Jewish settler movement in Israel, being able to say to The New Yorker, “We want to take the option of a Palestinian state off the table,” shows that Israelis who want to realize this while a fait accompli opportunity has been seized are currently very much in the foreground. As Palestinian Prime Minister Shtayyeh also stated, Arab states are also “fed up” with the Palestinian issue, and the recent joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has only confirmed Shtayyeh. The fact that no message other than calls for Israel to immediately stop its operations and for the International Criminal Court to investigate the war crimes committed by Israel could emerge from this summit shows that Arab countries that have not yet joined the Abraham Accords are waiting to continue this process with Israel.

AND THOSE WHO MOST INCREASE THE SUFFERING OF PALESTINIANS ARE…

While it is as clear as day that Biden cannot resort to many sanction tools he could use against Israel due to the unique dynamics of the US domestic political structure, there is no counter-interlocutor he can point to in Israel other than the Palestinian Authority, which is in a very difficult situation even in the West Bank.

On the other hand, the same domestic political dynamics will force the Biden administration to draw more boundaries and frameworks of movement for Israel as time passes. We cannot enter into a new discussion here at this point. But we cannot end this article without stating one point: In the Israeli-Palestinian issue, rather than the dilemmas of the Biden administration that increase the suffering of the Palestinians, the fact is that the “unconditional military support” stemming from the “outpost” role assigned to this country by the US, and the “two-state solution,” which has become a kind of rote memorization since the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and whose current feasibility is never questioned, is now almost impossible, and even if it came to life, it could not bring a lasting peace by failing to ensure that the parties feel safe.