But it’s not just young voters Biden has to contend with on this issue: 68 percent of all voters favor a cease-fire in Gaza, versus the 31 percent who support sending Israel weapons. And yet, Biden continues to refuse to call for an enduring cease-fire. The expectation in the White House is that after the prisoner swap, Israel will resume its bombardment of Gaza. Just last week, he published an op-ed in The Washington Post unequivocally supporting Israel’s invasion of Gaza based on the belief that somehow this time will be different, that an even more aggressive military response by Israel can somehow break the cycle of violence. “As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace,” Biden wrote.
Certainly, it is understandable that Israel wishes to defeat Hamas. There is, however, little evidence that a military-centric strategy can achieve that objective, particularly since Israel is loath to address, let alone remedy, the root causes of its conflict with the Palestinians by nonmilitary means. But given that Hamas poses no direct threat to the U.S.—unlike Al Qaeda or ISIS, who pursued universalist agendas and directly targeted America—and the heightened risk of a regional war that could pose such a threat, the United States’ cost-benefit analysis appears dangerously out of whack.
A senior Arab official recently told me that Biden has done more damage to America’s standing in the region than George W. Bush did with his illegal invasion of Iraq—a stunning statement. And the damage is not limited to America’s prestige and credibility in the Middle East. Biden has put the final nail in the coffin of the so-called Rules-Based International Order, Shivshankar Menon, India’s former national security advisor, told me.