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Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.
It is difficult to say when and how the war on Gaza will end. Even as the UN Security Council passed a resolution on Monday calling, for the first time since the war started six months ago, for a lasting ceasefire, Israeli officials were quick to brush it off, saying they will not stop until Hamas is defeated and the hostages are released. The US representative at the UN, who abstained, stunned her colleagues when she said that the resolution was “non-binding.”
Israel’s six-month war on Gaza is testing US-Israeli ties like never before. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is at the center of rising tensions between the two close allies. It is not Israel’s right to defend itself and destroy Hamas, which is at the heart of the crisis. Still, Netanyahu’s unrelenting and brazen push to carry on with the massive destruction of the Gaza Strip, regardless of the horrific scenes, the brutal tactics, and the shocking statistics, have become the indelible hallmarks of this war.
Of all the horrific things that Israel’s war on Gaza has delivered is the sight of thousands of Palestinians scrambling to get their hands on sacks of flour and other essential supplies being airdropped from the air or laden on aid trucks that were allowed to pass safely through Israeli controlled checkpoints.
In October 2022, Amos Hochstein, whose official title is deputy assistant to the president, senior energy and investment advisor, and US special presidential coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, brokered a historic maritime boundary agreement between Lebanon and Israel. Negotiations took months and were almost derailed many times. Still, Amos, a dual US-Israeli citizen, managed to seal the deal, which many thought was impossible to achieve.
Almost six months into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the tide has turned: It has lost the PR campaign completely, its ‘self-defense’ operation to uproot Hamas has resulted in the worst humanitarian disaster in decades, and it now faces serious charges of committing genocide as well as war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Benyamin Netanyahu’s capricious and miscalculated misadventure in Gaza has dragged his army more profoundly into a quagmire. There is no honor in what Israel has done in the past five months: the mass killings of women and children, the bombing of hospitals, the targeting of journalists, doctors, medics, and academics, and the displacement of over two million people. Now, Gazans face starvation and famine.
Less than nine months separates us from the US presidential elections in November, and, according to recent national polls, it is a dead heat between the two incumbents, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Despite his age, memory lapses, and controversial position on the Gaza war, Biden may yet survive despite a dismal approval rate of less than 40 percent and a vicious attack by the Republicans led by none other than Trump himself.
For the US and its Arab allies, the holy month of Ramadan, which begins in less than a month, is a virtual cut-off date for Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to conclude the five-month-old war on Gaza.
Four months into Israel’s war on Gaza, there is no let-up. More than 28,000 were killed in a genocidal war, live on TV! And what have we learned? Gaza is a test for humanity, one that puts the rules-based international order to shame. The war confirms what we have tried to ignore; that might make right.
Israel’s plan to launch a ground offensive into the heavily populated enclave of Rafah, nestled close to the Egyptian border in the Gaza Strip, could bring relations between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to a tipping point. Netanyahu has angered the White House by ignoring US warnings regarding the planned incursion into Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge and are living under horrendous conditions.
The US has carried a series of retaliatory airstrikes against pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria in response to a fatal drone attack that killed three of its soldiers and injured more than 30 last week at a base in northeastern Jordan. Announcing the strikes, US President Joe Biden said the US was not looking to engage in a broader conflict in the region.
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