US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken reached Tel Aviv, just days after Palestinian freedom fighters weighed a surprise war against Israel in a protest against the Saudi-Israel normalization drive that has entered its final stage. Blinken shared a podium with Israeli far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated America’s unequivocal support for the state of Israel and categorically told his Israeli friends that Israelis may be strong enough on their own to defend themselves but as long as America exists they will never have to. The Israeli Prime Minister termed the US’s assistance visitngible example of America’s unequivocal support to Israel. The far-right Israeli leader compared Hamas with Daesh and vowed to Crush the Palestinian resistance just like Daesh, a notorious terror outfit which was dismantled through a global consortium in the past decade.
The fierce hostility between heavily armed Israel military and Palestinian resistance movements including Hamas and Islamic Jihad continued over the past six days. Israel’s army has hammered Hamas with thousands of strikes resulting in hundreds of deaths and multiple thousands of injuries after Hamas killed 1200 Israelis and took hostages of nearly 200 Israeli troops over the past weekend. Another 1,300 Palestinians have died in fresh Israeli airstrikes in Gaza as Israel has levelled entire city blocks and destroyed thousands of buildings since Hamas launched its unprecedented bloodiest attack in Israel’s history. Presently, Palestinian cities including the West Bank and Gaza present scenes of destruction and ruin all around, buildings turned into rubble, hospitals filled with dead bodies and overcrowded with patients. Thousands of people took shelter in UN buildings that too are not safe from Israeli shelling and aerial airstrikes. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has imposed an unceasing blockade of Palestinian territory from the ground, through sea as well as air while blocking the provision of electricity, water, fuel and dearly needed medicines and life-saving drugs. Currently, Gaza’s 2.4 million residents face serious risk of hunger and famine along with a brutal ground operation at the hands of their worst enemy.
Amid such devastations and heart-wrenching scenarios, the Israel solidarity trip by the US Secretary of State and the provision of military and economic assistance to Tel Aviv against poorly equipped Palestinians undoubtedly sent dispiriting signals to Palestinians and Muslim nations in the Middle East and people around the globe. The world’s sole superpower has unilaterally put its weight behind an occupier and apartheid state as the Palestine-Israel conflict did not begin with Hamas’s surprise attack against the Jewish state nor did history start from October 8, D-Day. Hamas’ operation was a reaction to decades-long suppression and state atrocities of the Israeli regime, hence the United States and the Western world must correct their perspective regarding the history.
Historically, the US’s unconditional support for Israel has been a longstanding and contentious issue in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which has significant geopolitical implications on the Palestine dispute and geo-political dynamics in the Middle East region. Washington’s nexus with Tel Aviv exacerbates tensions in the Middle East and contributes to anti-American sentiment among Arabs and Muslims around the globe. The US-Israel alliance has undermined the Middle East peace process, intensified intra-Arab rivalry and caused violence and frustration among the Palestinians.
The successive US administrations had been in a race to garner support from the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States. In pursuit of domestic political goals, Republicans and Democrats both parties have blatantly abandoned global norms and UNSC resolutions on the Palestine issue, tarnishing American social and democratic values by linking US interests with the apartheid policies of the occupier Jewish state. Currently, biased and politically motivated policies of the Biden administration have not only endangered global peace but a major hurdle for the Palestinian nation to get its globally recognized right to self-determination which is essential for an ultimate resolution of the Palestine dispute and sustainable peace in the broader Middle East region. Historically, Washington’s failed policies and US-Israel alliance have sharply declined US influence in the region, as the Russo-China alliance is fully prepared to fill this gap through kinetic diplomacy and economic partnerships. As of now, such fascism will not prevail for a longer period, and it will surely come to an end in the future.
