Some thought the US would turn away from the Middle East to deal with its number one threat: China. This was stated on countless occasions following the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, after almost two decades of occupation. In the wake of the Shabat (Sabbath) massacre perpetrated by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, the US is back in full force. In fact, they had never left. Some of their most important military bases remain in countries of the Middle East, such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman, and they still maintain arsenals in Israeli territory. And in recent months, the White House has devoted efforts to bringing the kingdom of Saudi Arabia closer to the Jewish state.
However, after the carnage of October 7th, the Pax Americana is perhaps more present than ever. In the same week, Israel has been visited twice by the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who, on the one hand, wept publicly when referring to the terrible images of the atrocities of Hamas; and, on the other hand, participated for the first time in history in a meeting of the war cabinet of the Israeli national unity government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Defence secretary Lloyd Austin also immediately travelled to Israel and told the media from there that he, who had personally fought against Daesh, believes that "Hamas is worse than the infamous Islamic State."
Few would have believed that eleven days after the slaughter in southern Israel, president Joe Biden would personally travel to Jerusalem and then to a summit in Amman, to meet with the Jordanian monarch, the Egyptian president and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Both Egypt and Jordan are unofficially backing the Israeli crackdown on Hamas, as the Palestinian group is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which poses a threat to Amman and Cairo. However, the only thing they fear is paying the price for the Gaza war with an exodus of Palestinian refugees trying to invade their countries. Biden's goals are, on the one hand, to identify with Israel and give it the green light to destroy Hamas, and, on the other hand, to avoid jeopardizing the peace agreements already signed between Israel and the Arab countries, such as Egypt and Jordan. Likewise, to try to get, after the "storm" clears, prince Mohammed bin Salman, the strong man of Saudi Arabia, to agree to unfreeze the negotiations for normalization with Israel, which he decided to put on pause following the Israeli bombings in Gaza.
Biden's visit sends, first of all, a message of deterrence to Iran, which masterminded the Hamas massacre, and which constantly threatens the existence of Israel. Iran is now warning that if Israel invades Gaza by land, its Lebanese arm, the Shiite group Hezbollah, would enter the war by launching thousands of precision-guided missiles into Israeli territory. But Biden is not coming to the Jewish state alone. Behind him come two of the most powerful war machines on the planet, the aircraft carriers Gerald Ford and Eisenhower, which are waiting in the eastern Mediterranean, and are ready for any eventuality. To date, in Israel's ten wars, the US or any other country has never been directly involved. However, when Russia supports its new ally Iran - which sells it drones for the Ukraine war - and expresses its "understanding" of Hamas, this is anything but a local conflict.
Biden's message to Xi Jinping and Putin
With his visit to Jerusalem, Biden is also sending a message to Chinese president Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who themselves met in Beijing on Tuesday. The impression is that the American president is not giving up on his plans to change the Middle East. Biden is the last president who grew up with the memory of the Holocaust and the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. It is clear that Israel must react with great military force. But he already looks beyond the horizon. The 80-year-old US president, who will be engaged in a tough presidential campaign next year, will not allow the sadistic attack from a Palestinian terrorist group to change his plans to create a new Middle East. Hours after learning of the unprecedented scale of the barbarity, and after seeing images withheld from the media of terrorists slitting open human bodies, raping small children and women, and dismembering the bodies of soldiers, the president went to the media and did not hide for a second his feeling of disgust. Because of this, the White House compared the massacre of Hamas to the horrors of Nazism.
Since he said this, Israelis have adopted this discourse and labeled Hamas militiamen as "Nazis". History teaches that the Nazis were defeated and that a new Germany was built on their ruins. President Harry Truman declared a plan to rebuild Europe, the Marshall Plan, Germany became an economic power, and this week proposed military aid to the Jewish state. Yesterday, its chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, also visited Jerusalem to identify with the people of Israel. Biden's goal is to think about the future of Hamas. It all goes through Israel's new allies from the Abraham Accords: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and perhaps Saudi Arabia as well. The goal is to return the Gaza Strip - with Arab and international support - to the Palestinian National Authority, which, despite its major internal weaknesses, ruled the Palestinian enclave until 2007.
Distrust of Netanyahu
In Washington they also believe that at this moment, after ten months of failed attempts at judicial revolution and internal division in Israel, Netanyahu cannot be trusted. According to many prominent analysts, including Israel's Ben Caspit, when the war with Hamas ends, "Netanyahu will be finished." On the table of the Israeli prime minister, all the books on Winston Churchill, the person he admires the most, are piled up. This war is Netanyahu's Churchillian moment. However, he knows that in the end, even within his own party, the Likud, everyone will demand an explanation for the defeat of October 7th: how was this defeat of the Israeli intelligence services and the his army, who did not anticipate the Hamas slaughter. Everyone in the region and the world understands that after the 7th October massacre, 'Bibi' will never be the same. But the conflict must be prevented from spreading.