President Joe Biden left the White House on Tuesday afternoon to fly to Israel, a country still mourning its dead even as it prepares a ground invasion of Gaza and a mission to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.
Officials say his whistle-stop mission is twofold: showing solidarity with Israel and helping deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Written in there is an even bigger question.
Analysts say Biden must walk a fine line between helping Israel ensure that Hamas terrorists can never repeat last weekend’s massacre, when they killed at least 1,300 people, without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military operation an apology to Iran’s regional allies, such as Hezbollah. to join the battle.
President Joe Biden left the White House on Tuesday afternoon to fly to Israel, a country still mourning its dead even as it prepares a ground invasion of Gaza and a mission to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.
Brett Bruen, chairman of the Global Situation Room and a former US diplomat, said the trip was on par with some of the most important diplomatic moves by any president in modern history.
“It’s high-stakes diplomacy with a low chance of success,” he said. “But it is also the place where Biden, if he comes to the moment, will help us avoid a humanitarian catastrophe or regional conflict and prevent a return to the era of global terrorism.
‘But there are still major doubts about all that at the moment.’
The White House announced the trip late Monday evening.
Biden is expected to land in Israel on Wednesday morning, hours after hundreds of people were believed to have been killed in an airstrike on a hospital in Gaza.
Israel denied Hamas’s claim that it was responsible for the attack, insisting it was a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.
He will spend just three to four hours in Tel Aviv, meeting Netanyahu and other officials, before heading to neighboring Jordan.
The Air Force is expected to be on its way to Washington before the end of the day.
It is not with risk. That was visible the day before. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Netanyahu had to rush to a bomb shelter as sirens sounded through Tel Aviv.
Then there are the political risks.
It’s a journey Biden never expected to take. His administration had quietly scaled back any attempt to find broad peace in the Middle East, attempting instead to take a series of smaller steps to ensure security and prosperity in the Palestinian territories, while at the same time pushing led to the ‘normalization’ of ties between Israel and the Arab states. that started under President Donald Trump.)
Biden is expected to land in Israel on Wednesday morning, hours after hundreds of people were believed to have been killed in an airstrike on a hospital in Gaza
Hamas terrorists changed all that. In a long-planned attack, they took out surveillance platforms along the Gaza border before thousands of armed men attacked civilian and military targets.
It humiliated a government that had staked its claim to power on protecting Israelis from the militant threat.
And it left behind a nation mourning men, women and children gunned down in cold blood.
Another 200 people are believed to have been taken hostage.
At the same time, Iran has raised the stakes and warned of a “preventive measure” ahead of an Israeli ground attack. His allies in Hezbollah have fired volleys from their positions in Lebanon.
“All possible options and scenarios are available for Hezbollah…” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on state television on Monday evening. “Of course, resistance leaders will not allow the Zionist regime to take any action in Gaza, and when it feels reassured about Gaza, it will move on to other resistance areas in the region.”
White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the president’s first priority was to reaffirm American solidarity with Israel and ask what Netanyahu needed in terms of security assistance.
“He will continue to talk to them about the hostage situation, to try to gather whatever additional information there is, including continuing to coordinate our efforts to get Americans home and back to their families where they belong,” he said. .
The danger, according to Aryeh Lightstone, chief adviser to Trump’s ambassador to Israel, would be to call for restraint.
“I have my kids at the table right now, so I’m not going to tell you what we saw 10 days ago,” he said. “We’ve had 15 years of restraint and look where it’s gotten us.”
He said the most important thing Biden’s visit could achieve was to send a clear message to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia across the border from Israel, that it must stay out of any conflict.
“The first is by being here with the aircraft carriers, he must deter Hezbollah and other parties from thinking that they can enter into this war,” he said, referring to the Pentagon’s decision to send two aircraft carrier strike groups to the airport . the eastern Mediterranean.
“It must not only be a visible threat, but also a credible threat.”
Number two, he said, was supporting Israel’s right to get rid of Hamas.
“And number three, he needs to communicate to the region that they need to work with Egypt to get every Palestinian who doesn’t want to fight out of Gaza and find another place for them while this war continues,” he said. .
The final piece of the puzzle, according to former diplomat Bruen, ensures that Iran has no diplomatic room to maneuver.
“I think Bien’s goal is to keep the Europeans… and try to keep some of our other allies on board with their support for Israel, which then makes it more challenging for Iran to come up with a military response.” to come into opposition. ‘ he said.
No small task for a few hours on the ground.