The AFR View
Biden’s mission is to stop terrorism metastasising into regional war
The President is right to tell Israelis they must not copy America’s post-9/11 mistakes driven by “all-consuming rage” that could ignite the region’s wider conflicts again.
Joe Biden’s visit to a wartime Tel Aviv this week must be one of the most striking that a US president has ever made. In 1973, the last time Israel was under such direct threat, Henry Kissinger (now watching on at 100 years old) was the tireless emissary of Washington.
President Biden, who takes pride in his personal diplomatic skills, has this time gone to Israel himself and staked his own authority on both keeping Israel secure and making sure it also acts with restraint.
Mr Biden is right to put US power squarely behind Israel in its dark hour, as it acts to uproot Hamas, whose aim is not negotiation with Israel, but its destruction. He is right to deter Iran from opening other fronts against Israel, metastasising the conflict and undermining for its own ends the thaw between Israel and much of the Arab world that emerged after the war of 1973.
Joe Biden has staked his own authority on both keeping Israel secure and making sure it also acts with restraint. AP
This must be clear, and America should be supported in doing this. But Mr Biden’s presence underscored that support only comes with assurances from Israel that it will avoid needless casualties when it moves on Hamas, and that ways must be found to relieve suffering among Palestinian civilians.
In their rightful cause, he told Israelis, they must not copy America’s post-9/11 mistakes driven by “all-consuming rage” which could ignite the region’s wider conflicts again.
Palestinian civilians are still dying. Israelis are still hostages in Gaza. The risk of events spiralling out of control were underscored by the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital tragedy.
Military experts say the evidence – the lack of a crater or severe shrapnel damage – points against an Israeli aerial bomb. The hundreds of dead were most likely victims of a misfiring rocket launched by militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad which fell into the hospital compound where they sought shelter.
That won’t stop the rage across the Arab world, or its sense of unfair suffering among Palestinian civilians caught between the two armed forces, as highlighted here by Industry Minister Ed Husic yesterday and federal member Anne Aly. Mr Biden must manage all those concerns as well.
Destroying Hamas with its arsenals and tunnel networks without mass casualties for Gazans who live among them will be hard, even for Israeli forces who have long trained for such a fight.
For some years, Hamas had focused more on governing and its political legitimacy with Palestinians. On October 7, its strategy shifted violently back to its jihadist roots with the worst attacks on Israeli soil since 1947.
Washington’s diplomatic absence on Palestine and neglect of Palestinian moderates, US focus on Russia and China, and Israeli normalisation with Saudi Arabia are all cited as reasons. But a more violent Middle East gives more power to disruptive Iran, keen to exploit divisions. That’s why there is rising fear in the world’s capitals that worse is still coming.
The US aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean are there to deter, and regional experts believe it unlikely that Iran will risk the network of paramilitaries and proxies that it has built up in an all-out confrontation with Israel in Lebanon or Syria.
But an Israeli ground assault on Hamas will be a direct strike on that network, which they cannot give up easily. Iran’s proxies might try to launch more terror on Jewish targets elsewhere instead.
Hamas and its Iranian backers are determined that their road of terror and destruction should settle the Palestinian conflict with Israel, not negotiations and compromise with more moderate Palestinian groups and Arab states.
Provoking Israel to excess, capitalising on tragedies such as the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, and derailing Israel’s relations with Arab governments and peoples is their way of achieving that.
It is in everyone’s interests that Hamas is crippled and its ideology sidelined. How Israel destroys this mortal threat without alienating the moderates and the neighbouring states that it needs for a long-term settlement is now the critical issue for Israel and its American ally. It will demand effort and bandwidth that has not been given recently.
The world has been reminded how destabilising Middle East terrorism can be. Once it has been dealt with, then Washington must surely follow Mr Biden’s visit through and put a longer-term peace search back on its agenda.
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