Will unconditional US support for Israel harm its ties with the Arab world?
The United States’ public support for Israel’s all-out assault on Gaza is undermining its relationships with its Arab allies and risks doing long-term damage to its standing in the region, analysts say.
Perennial US allies such as Jordan have openly criticised what they see as Washington’s green light for Israel to do as it sees fit in Gaza after more than 1,405 people were killed following an attack by the armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, and fighters took some 200 people captive, according to Israeli officials.
Israel has responded by pounding the Palestinian enclave of Gaza with air raids that have already killed more than 7,028 Palestinians. It is widely expected to launch a ground invasion.
For its part, the US is “increasingly pushing behind the scenes for better Israeli decision-making, but it’s also providing weapons to Israel carte blanche”, said Josh Paul, a former senior official at the Department of State who publicly quit his post last week in protest at the strategy.
“Washington is giving unambiguous and unquestioned military support to Israel despite what many in the region see as a deep injustice. We have tried to frame ourselves as an honest broker, but we’re removing what little credibility we had left in that role,” he told Al Jazeera.
When US President Joe Biden visited Israel last week, he pledged the US’s full support, although he also negotiated a trickle of aid into Gaza and warned Israelis not to be “consumed” by rage.
He also backed Israel’s claim that Palestinian fighters were to blame for a deadly blast at a hospital in Gaza, although the main video evidence for that has been debunked and controversy is still raging over who was responsible.
Biden on Friday made a speech from the White House saying he had asked Congress for even more military assistance to Israel, barely mentioning the spiralling Palestinian death toll except to accuse Hamas of using “Palestinian civilians as human shields”.
