Enough America...enough

Just as Israel has gone much further than many imagined in the madness of the war it is waging against the civilians of the people of the Gaza Strip, defenseless from all weapons, America, President Joe Biden, has also gone far in turning a blind eye to the follies of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the unjust government of aggression, which he heads with extremist politicians, none of whom hesitated to suggest completely wiping the Strip off the surface of the Earth with an atomic bomb similar to the one America dropped on Hiroshima. 

For the master of the White House, whether Republican or Democrat, to stand by the Israeli ally is not new, but rather expected, and should not raise any surprise. Records of all the major crises in the Middle East region prove that Israel is not just an ally of the United States, as much as it constitutes its basic base, which alone enjoys trust that is not subject to conditions or restrictions, and which no American administration will grant to any of its allies anywhere in the world.

The above is an existing, documented reality, since the establishment of Israel in 1948, and America’s haste, by decision of Harry Truman, its thirty-third Democratic president at the time, to precede all countries of the world in recognizing it as a state on the land of the people of Palestine. However, history also documents that there were moments of exception during which more than one American administration decided that there was a need to say to a trusted ally that “enough is enough,” even if it was in the spirit of pulling the ear of a troublesome child inside the house out of concern for the interests of the family itself. This happened twice in a blatant manner, in front of the people of the entire world. The first time was when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower rushed to issue an order that was not without a veiled rebuke to the rulers of Tel Aviv demanding that they immediately withdraw from Egyptian territory and from the Gaza Strip, which was then part of Egypt, after the Suez War in 1956.

The second time, a kind of challenge occurred between the administration of President George H. W. Bush, also a Republican, and Israel’s Yitzhak Shamir, the extremist Likud leader, regarding two matters that directly affected America’s interests in the Middle East region. The first was facilitating the convening of the peace conference in Madrid in 1991, and the second was related to the first, which was freezing the construction of new settlements in the occupied West Bank during the June 1967 war. The second time was in June 1990, when the world saw James Baker, the US Secretary of State at that time, who placed the White House phone number public in front of international television cameras, suggesting that Israeli politicians contact him after reaching a decision to stop the expansion of settlements on the West Bank. That day, he addressed them, saying: “When you are serious about peace, call us,” otherwise stubbornness will result in facing action. My punishment is to freeze any new loans.

It can be concluded from the above that the master of the White House can, when he wants, exert pressure on the rulers of Israel with the aim of putting an end to any persistence in stubbornness that harms the interests of the United States and affects the credibility of its relations with the rest of its allies in the region, and without intending to abandon the approach of steadfast American support for the survival of Israel. The most powerful weapons arsenal among the countries of the region as a whole. So, as long as this is the case, the following question may be asked: What prevents the Joe Biden administration, and even the president personally, from taking a more firm stance against Netanyahu’s foolishness, which has exceeded every reasonable limit? Isn’t it enough for the Democratic President to have an explicit electoral instrument when he declares that he is a “Zionist” in public, so that he can stare the Israeli war machine in the face with a red eye and say that “enough is enough”? Yes, he can, if he wants, even if he has the human motive to take precedence over everything else.

ٍSource: Alsharq Alawsat