While this might be the worst-case scenario for Palestinians in Gaza, it isn’t the bottom of the abyss. Beyond Gaza the region is boiling. Protests erupted across the Arab and Muslim world and well beyond it at a scale and scope we have not seen in the region since the Arab Spring. Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s Egypt, which has banned protests for years, is now calling for them because they know they can’t contain the people’s anger or be seen as trying to. Jordan, a key American ally, had to cancel a meeting with President Biden while he was on his way to the region because they couldn’t contain the public outrage. All this and I haven’t even mentioned Hezbollah yet, or other militias in the region who may well get involved if the Israeli ground incursion starts and churns on even as American aircraft carriers sit in the Mediterranean.
However this crisis ends, and I pray it ends immediately, the implications for U.S. foreign policy will be profound. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost.… Forget about rules, forget about world order,” said a G7 diplomat to the Financial Times. “They won’t ever listen to us again.” Ukraine has been the single biggest foreign policy and military investment of the Biden administration’s tenure. Russia and China are likely watching with glee. And, of course, there is the very real possibility of a much larger regional or even global war. The moment we find ourselves in now is being described as the most dangerous for America in 78 years.
How the hell did we get here? How the hell did we allow this to happen? To be put in a position of so much cost, so much suffering, with such massive stakes and no options but bad and worse … how? These are questions Israelis are already asking of their leaders as they ponder their intelligence failures regarding the massive and horrifying killings by Hamas on October 7. But these are questions everyone should be asking of their leadership, especially Americans.