How Should the U.S. Respond to the Gaza Crisis?

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President George W. Bush’s final blunder in the waning days of his presidency has been a blind support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that, as of this writing, has resulted in the death of more than 400 Palestinians, and close to 2000 injured, many of them women and children.  Despite a growing international outcry against Israel’s atrocities, the Bush administration has maintained its complicity with Tel Aviv’s atrocities, which have been criticized by the UN officials in the strongest language.  This will certainly backfire against the US, currently embroiled in two military campaigns in the Middle East, as well as the moderate pro-US Arab states, will radicalize the region and embolden the al-Qaeda terrorists.  

Israel’s air offensive against Hamas will not suffice to uproot or defeat Hamas no matter how many bombs are dropped on Gaza and, henceforth, an Israeli ground offensive, culminating in more death and destruction visited upon the helpless and impoverished Gazans, yet without any prospect that the re-occupation of Gaza will lead to anything but another quagmire for Israel, winding the clock back to the past, that is, similar to the pre-2005 situation that forced Israel’s unilateral withdrawal, though without any accompanying political adjustment that would necessitate respecting the Palestinians’ choice of their political representatives.  

Having violated its truce with Hamas on November 4th, when Israeli soldiers killed six Hamas activists inside Gaza, and refusing to lift its illegal and oppressive siege of Gaza, Israel is directly responsible for the Gaza crisis today, no matter how fiercely the White House spin doctors place the blame on Hamas’ crude rockets fired at Israel, fact is that any objective scrutiny of Israel’s iron-fist approach toward the long-suffering Palestinians would readily realize the serious defects of White House’s stated rationale for blindly supporting Israel’s military gambit in Gaza.

One can only hope that Bush’s dreadful Middle East error will not be recycled by the incoming Obama administration.  A prudent White House under Obama should send strong signals to Israel that business as usual, that is US’s benign neglect of its oppression of Palestinians, should come to an immediate halt, that the US arms sold to Israel cannot be employed against Palestinians, for they are for self-defense purposes only, and that the Israeli policy of collective punishment of Palestinians living in Gaza is unacceptable and Israel should not prevent the delivery of medicine, food, fuel, and other basic necessities to the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza under any pretext.  

In case Israel ignores the US’s pressure, the Obama administration must then contemplate the next alternative: suspending all financial and military aid to Israel pending its compliance with the UN request to suspend all military actions against the Palestinians living in Gaza.  History proves that Israel responds only to such pressures from the US and the world community and will likely utilize its formidable army of pro-Israel lobbyists and media pundits to neutralize any attempt by president Obama to force a change of behavior on its part; distorting the facts about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, by depicting Hamas as an Iranian “proxy” pure and simple, is an integral aspect of pro-Israel propaganda today. President Obama should listen instead to the voices of reason, such as former president Jimmy Carter, as well as the former US envoy to the Middle East, retired general Anthony Zinni, who have advised the US government to engage in direct dialogue with Hamas, despite the Israeli leaders’ politics of exterminism and their declared intention of carrying the Gaza campaign to “the bitter end.”  By all indication, the latter can only be achieved by a prolonged and brutal campaign that will exponentially multiply the Gazan war casualties, in a word, a genocidal war.   

In conclusion, one only hopes that the president-elect Barack Obama will break his inexcusable silence on this crisis and clearly demonstrates the contours of a wind of change in US’s hitherto one-sided and unbalanced pro-Israel policy that consistently ignores the interests and sentiments of the 90 percent plus of the region’s population who are Muslims. Any hint by Obama that he is unwilling to pressure Israel will be a recipe for disaster and an ominous sign of a US foreign policy taken hostage by the pro-Israel lobby.