Biden criticizes Israel as Gaza death toll mounts
What happened
President Biden this week warned Israel that it risks losing international support for its war on Hamas through the “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, revealing a growing split between the Biden administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As close to half of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million threatened to crowd into Rafah, on the Egyptian border, hunger and disease, including hepatitis and rabies, spread through Gaza. Prices of food surged and rent for rooms in Rafah went up 50fold as families tried to shelter under thin plastic sheets. With Gaza’s death toll rising to 17,700, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry, Israel continued a campaign of bombardment, and expanded its operations with giant pumps that use seawater to flood Hamas’ network of underground tunnels.
The devastation in Gaza raises questions about the war’s aftermath, and the U.S. accused Netanyahu’s government of blocking “anything remotely approaching a two-state solution.” Biden warned Israel against an endless war, comparing the campaign in Gaza to the U.S. war in Afghanistan. “Don’t make the same mistakes we made at 9/11,” he said. Netanyahu, for his part, rejected a U.S. plan to have the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank, oversee Gaza after the war. Still, the U.S. was one of 10 countries to vote this week against a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire. One hundred fifty-three nations voted in favor and 23 abstained, as U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres accused Israel of forcing Gazans to “ricochet between ever-smaller slivers of the south.”
What the columnists said
There’s “no such thing in war as a tactic” with zero risk, said Noah Rothman in National Review. Pumping water from the Mediterranean into Gaza’s tunnels could contaminate Gaza’s remaining freshwater supply and worsen its crisis. But the alternative is imperiling Israeli forces as they move “room by room” through Hamas’ “deadly rabbit warrens.” The way Hamas can “spare its fighters from their watery graves” and mitigate the environmental risks is to “surrender unconditionally to IDF forces and hand over the hostages it seized.”
Biden’s comments were “among his most critical of Israel,” said Perry Bacon Jr. in The Washington Post. But actions speak louder than words, and his administration “continues to provide military and diplomatic support.” It circumvented Congress last week and “unilaterally” sold Israel over $100 million worth of ammunition. “It would be easy and logical” to stop selling Israel weapons and join global calls for a cease-fire. Instead, Biden is eroding “America’s credibility in foreign affairs.”
Israel launched this campaign with “no plan for what to do in the wake of any victory,” said Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times. Rebuilding Gaza “will be a multibillion-dollar, multiyear endeavor.” Israel needs international support, and it won’t find any without “a legitimate Palestinian partner” and a plan for a twostate solution. Yet Netanyahu is appealing to his base by “refusing to help nurture a revamped Palestinian Authority.” If this continues, “Gaza could end up a giant, sucking chest wound” for Israel.