May 13, 2021
This week’s flare-up in the Middle East is showing how that plan never really had a chance.
What started off as hostilities between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in contested East Jerusalem has now quickly escalated to a near full blown war between Israel and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, dragging the U.S. back into the center of diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire before the situation becomes more uncontrollable.
After at least 25 high-level calls since the weekend, Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday and, while defending Israel’s right to respond to rocket fire from Gaza, said “my expectation and hope is that this will be closing down sooner than later.”
Daily Times
May 13, 2021
Joe Biden entered the White House hoping to avoid entanglement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But, like US presidents before him, a crisis is dragging him in sooner than he would have liked.
The flare-up in violence is putting Biden on a tightrope not only diplomatically but also at home, where progressives in his Democratic Party are increasingly vocal in criticism of Israel, which enjoyed zealous support from former president Donald Trump.
“You can appreciate that the Biden administration looks at this as a low-value, low-return enterprise fraught with political risk,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime US negotiator on the Middle East.
May 13, 2021
An eight-month-old accord aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and the Arab world is facing its first major test as violence flares from Jerusalem to Gaza. And it’s proving tricky navigate.
Weeks of public anger over Israel’s move to expel Palestinian families from their homes in Jerusalem was already making it more difficult for the United Arab Emirates and three other signatories of the so-called Abraham Accords to justify deepening ties. Now that’s been followed by an explosion of violence, with fighting in Jerusalem and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip leaving mounting civilian deaths, most of them Palestinians.