Akbar Shahid Ahmed
When Biden unveiled his cease-fire proposal on May 31, I think there was a sense on the part of many US government officials that they could land the plane. There was a lot of confidence (and perhaps hubris) on their part.
Thinking about the wider context at the time, we saw the deadly raid that Israel launched, killing hundreds of Palestinians while rescuing a handful of Israeli hostages. There was ongoing bombing and displacement in Gaza. To outside observers, it did not look as if Israel had stopped escalating its campaign.
However, the Biden administration officials told themselves a story. From their perspective, a couple of things had happened. Firstly, they had persuaded Biden to stop a shipment of two-thousand-pound bombs and some five-hundred-pound bombs, which was really a stretch. That shows you how limited their willingness to impose any kind of restraint on US support for Israel was. But for them, that was huge.
They were also looking at the picture of the Israeli attack on Rafah, the southernmost town in Gaza, on the border with Egypt. This was the place where more than a million Palestinians had fled in response to Israeli evacuation orders. The United States said for months that an Israeli assault on Rafah would be a red line. Biden openly set this test for himself.
The Israelis then attacked Rafah in early May. They also prompted a serious diplomatic crisis, which continues to be a problem, by taking over Gaza’s border with Egypt. That was a clear escalation, crossing Biden’s red line. But you had US officials like John Kirby saying, “We don’t think the Israelis have crossed the line.” They thought the Israelis hadn’t launched a full-blown invasion, so from that point of view, they could say, “We’ve gotten results from the Israelis — they aren’t doing this.”
Into June and July, you saw people…
Auteur: Akbar Shahid Ahmed
