2023-10-18 03:38:06
Will Joe Biden help appease the Middle East? The American president left for Israel on Tuesday, but had to give up going to Jordan after a bombing of a Gaza hospital further fueled tension.
When he announced his trip on Monday, the Democratic president was betting on being able to present himself as both a guarantor of Israel’s security in its war against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and as the best hope for civilians, as well as a bulwark against the risks of a regional escalation.
But the search for balance he intended to achieve with a stopover in Tel Aviv followed by a trip to Jordan was blown up even before he left.
Joe Biden, who boarded Air Force One around 9:40 p.m. GMT, announced that he is “postponing” his trip to Amman.
In any case, Jordan had canceled the summit in which it was due to participate together with King Abdullah II, the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al Sisi, and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Biden conveyed “his deepest condolences for the innocent lives lost in the explosion at a hospital in Gaza” and wished “a speedy recovery to the injured.”
He also spoke about the issue with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and King Abdullah II of Jordan, the White House reported.
In a statement, the president said he was “outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion” and had ordered his advisers to “continue to gather information about what exactly happened” in the bombing, which killed at least 200 people.
Hamas blames Israel and the Israeli army attributes responsibility for the bombing to Islamic Jihad.
The tension is extreme, with demonstrations in several Arab countries and a “day of rage” called by the Lebanese pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah.
Biden, 80, already traveled to Ukraine in February, a country at war where he was received with open arms. But in the Middle East it is unknown whether his presence will calm things down.
Because after he defended Israel’s “duty” to defend itself after the bloody Hamas attack on October 7, what message can he convey by appearing alongside Netanyahu, when many Arab countries accuse Israel of the bombing of the hospital?
And how is he going to convey the message that the civilians of the enclave can count on him to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe they are experiencing?
Furthermore, Biden also risks returning empty-handed, with no promise from the Israeli government to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and no answers for the families of American citizens kidnapped by Hamas, the exact number of whom is unknown. .
The United States has also so far failed to convince Egypt to at least partially open its border to let in Palestinian civilians fleeing incessant shelling.
By traveling to the region, the American president wants to dissuade Hezbollah, and therefore Iran, from making things even worse.
The United States does not want the conflict to spread, among other reasons, because it already supplies huge funds to Ukraine and wants to conserve strategic resources to confront China if it needs it.
“We are the United States of America, for God’s sake, the most powerful nation… in the history of the world. We can take care of both,” Ukraine and Israel at the same time, the president said Sunday on CBS. .
He will ask Congress for a combined $100 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the migration crisis on the border between the United States and Mexico, a US source told AFP.
But it does not have total control over the events: any additional deployment of aid to Israel needs the green light from the US Congress and the Lower House has been paralyzed for days, without a president, since a group of supporters of former president Donald Trump dismissed the one it had.
Biden, campaigning for a second term, cannot allow himself the slightest weakness, when 30 Americans have died since the Hamas attack and there are fears of an outbreak of hatred against Jews and Muslims, in an already very divided country.
#Biden #leaves #Israel #risky #trip #mandate