Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

🇮🇱🇵🇸 The US administration should not lose sight of our foreign policy objectives. Americans want Hamas eradicated as much as the Israelis do. We want a complete defeat of Hamas. Neither Americans or Israelis will accept any deal that allows Hamas leaders to walk away. Biden needs to remember that failing to meet this objective would have a bigger negative effect on his election results than any other decision he makes. The so-called Progressives would love it if Biden failed to meet this objective. Some of them would love to see Hamas walk away unscathed, which is disturbing, but they are not the majority in the USA, far from it. Eradicating Hamas is an essential foreign policy objective for the USA.

The difference between Americans and Israeli leadership is that Americans also want to ensure the security of innocent civilians. That is another objective for us. Americans want the first objective, defeating Hamas, to be executed in a way that does not violate international law or norms. Americans want to respect the human rights of all innocent people, and we want our allies like Israel to do the same. So the US administration's strategy must meet both of these objectives. Not one or the other, but both, otherwise they fail.

We said we would not allow Israel to cross the line. But our red line is to not allow an ally to disregard the lives of innocent civilians, and to not allow millions of innocent people to starve to death. Those our our red lines. We are not saying Rafah is a red line. According to Gallant, the IDF chief, Rafah is necessary to meet the first objective, defeating Hamas, and I believe him. So Rafah is really not a red line for us. If the Israelis do not intend to protect the innocents in Rafah, then they would be crossing the red line. If the Israelis don't have a plan to meet the second objective, to protect innocent civilians, then the USA needs to do it for them. We need to put together a plan for Israel, and we may even need to execute the plan for them, to ensure that both of our objectives are met. This is what we mean by not leaving everything up to Netanyahu. Netanyahu only cares about the first objective, not the second, so leaving the protection of civilians up to him is foolish.

That's where I disagree with the Biden administration. Biden won't go the extra mile to ensure both objectives are met. He keeps saying he needs to protect American military personnel by keeping them "out of harms way." But "our boys" are well-trained - they're professionals. They know how to handle themselves and protect themselves in the middle of a conflict zone. It's not American military personnel that needs to be kept out of harms way, but innocent civilians and non-profit aid workers. Civilians have no idea how to protect themselves in a conflict zone. Yet those are the people Biden wants to do the ground work in the middle of a war - civilians and aid workers. I think that is foolish, and that is why so many civilians and aid workers are getting killed. Organizing the movement of people and the distribution of aid in the middle of a war is beyond the capacity of ordinary civilians and aid workers. They need military personnel there to organize the distribution of aid, and to keep civilians out of harms way. The American military is in a unique position, because they can communicate directly with the IDF. They would know exactly where the IDF is going to strike, and they could move the civilians in an orderly fashion, and notify the IDF when all is clear. The IDF will never disclose that kind of information to random civilians or aid workers, many of whom may be pro-Hamas, so it's not possible for non-military personnel to be as effective at protecting civilians. Biden also doesn't seem to understand that the vast majority of Americans enjoy seeing the American military performing good deeds like distributing aid to people in need and protecting civilians - it makes them happy - it makes them proud to be an American. And Biden also doesn't seem to understand that these kinds of good deeds generate huge amounts of goodwill towards Americans in the international community, invalidating any argument against the expense. We really need to be there to organize the protection of civilians and the distribution of aid or else it is not going to get done.

I believe the Biden administration's stance on using the US military in scenarios like this is dogmatic and that's why his strategy is ineffective. That is what we would do differently.

xo