Ariel Schalit/AP Photo
Israeli army tanks move toward the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel, November 1, 2023.
The unending flow of god-awful news from Israel-Palestine grew predictably worse today with Bibi Netanyahu’s announcement that Israel would stay in Gaza after the current war for some period of time. Staying, in this context, means controlling, or more precisely, seeking to control.
This runs counter to the Biden administration’s recommendations that the Palestinian Authority, which has nominal control over part of the West Bank, should be assigned to that task. The problem with that recommendation is that the Palestinian Authority is widely and correctly viewed as a de facto agent of the Israeli government in its efforts to suppress expressions of Palestinian discontent in the territories over which it has jurisdiction. The other problem is that Palestinians have experienced decades of the PA’s corruption, which means decades in which governmental aid has often not reached its intended Palestinian recipients. Moreover, just like Hamas, the PA has not held any elections over the past 16 years.
The rickety state of the PA’s legitimacy has long been one of Bibi’s and the Israeli right’s chief policy goals. As the PA does not pursue the exterminist policies of Hamas, it’s long been a potential partner for some kind of two-state solution—the very solution that’s anathema to Israeli settlers and Bibi himself. Under Bibi’s long tenure as prime minister, Israel has steadily uprooted and isolated Palestinian West Bank communities and rejected any possible settlement of the conflict that the PA could support. By contrast, until last month, Bibi’s government thought it had a deal of sorts with Hamas, in which Hamas would keep things quiet in return for Israel’s continued opposition to any two-state resolution, which made Hamas’s support for a Nakba-in-reverse appear to some Palestinians as no less likely than a two-state deal.
Which leaves the U.S. where, exactly? It appears that President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have failed to persuade other Arab states—Egypt and Saudi Arabia, most prominently—to take some kind of administrative role in postwar Gaza. Among America’s recent presidents, Biden stands out as no fan of forever wars (see: Afghanistan), and is obviously dismayed at the prospect of Israel’s return occupation of Gaza, which can only foment more Palestinian rage even if Hamas is eliminated.
Some congressional Democrats who support the president’s call for $14 billion in additional military aid to Israel have raised questions about Israel’s possible diversion of some of those weapons to West Bank settlers who are waging their own war of sorts on West Bank Palestinians. Now, it appears likely that a chunk of that aid will go to the Israeli army’s long-term reoccupation of Gaza, which runs counter to the policies the U.S. has sought for Israel-Palestine. Indeed, by the time an aid package passes Congress and is delivered to Israel, the current conflagration will likely have ended and much of that aid will go to the very occupation against which Biden has counseled Bibi.
So, does that aid even make sense to those Israelis and their supporters—including congressional Democrats—who understand the need for Israel to clear out of the West Bank and move decisively to a two-state solution? I don’t think it does.
