Even as the US construction of temporary humanitarian aid pier on the Gazan Mediterranean coast is just beginning operation, Israel seems willing to close other land-based access points for food and medical aid to be funneled into devastated Gaza. But even that pier is inadequate to address the volume of medical and food aid needed in Gaza. As the International Criminal Court (ICC) is preparing war crime indictments against senior Israeli officials, Israel plans to resume her attacks on a very decimated Gaza (see discussion below). The ICC is situated in The Hague, Netherlands and is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Conveniently, neither Israel nor the United States recognize the ICC.
Believing it can root out most of Hamas militarily, despite the reality that such a complete annihilation is near impossible, as the most recent efforts to implement a lasting ceasefire have failed, “Israel on Monday [May 6th] called for the evacuation of Palestinians from eastern Rafah, in the clearest sign yet that it is preparing to invade the southern Gaza city… Rafah, where some 1.3 million Palestinians are believed to be sheltering, has so far been mostly spared from attack in the seven-month conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“Israel’s closest allies, including the United States and Britain, had urged it to call off the operation to avoid further civilian casualties, and aid organisations warn that any operation would do major damage to Gaza’s last remaining infrastructure, with a high loss of life ‘inevitable’… Hopes have been high that negotiations for another hostage deal would save the city from invasion, but Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has vowed to send ground troops regardless of any truce.” The Telegraph, May 6th. To much of the world, including a very large contingent of American college students, the United States is viewed as the great enabler of Israel’s rightwing ruling coalition and its massive retaliatory attack in Gaza.
The Biden administration, with GOP support, continued to supply Israel with billions of dollars of military equipment and munitions, which Israel clearly deployed in its devastating retribution against Gaza. The result: death of tens of thousands of innocent Gazans, mostly women and children. That Joe Biden has been jawboning to curtail Israel’s military efforts, pressing for a lasting ceasefire, seems rather hypocritical as the flow of US arms continued to flow.
The caustic relationship between Israel’s PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, and President Biden didn’t seem to rise to the occasion of the US’ stopping or slowing the flow of US arms to Israel. Indeed, when the latest breakdown in achieving a ceasefire resulting in an amping up of Israeli plans to storm Rafah in Southern Gaza to oust a purportedly significant Hamas presence. But rumors that Biden was slowly cutting back further shipments of arms to Israel have been widely reported: “The Biden administration last week put a hold on a shipment of US-made ammunition to Israel, two Israeli officials told Axios.
“It marks the first time since Hamas’ Oct 7 attack that the US has stopped a weapons shipment intended for the Israeli military, according to Axios, which added that the decision had raised serious concerns inside the Israeli government.” The Telegraph, May 5th. But the innocents in all this, including tens of thousands of mostly women and children, faced obliteration of their homes and infrastructure as well as massive indiscriminate death and serious injury. Now, disease and famine are their lot in life, with little near-term hope of rescue.
“A top U.N. official has warned that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine” after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory… Cindy McCain, the American director of the United Nations World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine… ‘It’s horror,’ McCain told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ in an interview to air Sunday [May 5th]. ‘There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north, and it’s moving its way south’…
“She said a cease-fire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes were essential to confronting the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people… A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, played down the prospects for a full end to the war. The official said Israel was committed to the Rafah invasion and it will not agree in any circumstance to end the war as part of a deal to release hostages.
“The proposal that Egyptian mediators had put to Hamas sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate, six-week cease-fire and partial release of Israeli hostages, and would include some sort of Israeli pullout. The initial stage would last for 40 days. Hamas would start by releasing female civilian hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.” Associated Press, May 5th. But the promise of a ceasefire seemed to have cratered again… even as Hamas said on May 6th that it had accepted a Gaza cease-fire proposal from Egypt and Qatar, as Israel’s offer died. Israel’s response? The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Monday [5/6] that it had begun "conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip." While not a massive assault, and Israel is still sent an envoy to Egypt to discuss a ceasefire, IDF forces have seized and closed the Rafah entry point, temporarily shutting off major aid supplies from entering Gaza.
Could the carnage in Gaza, reflected in massive on-campus takeovers and disruption here in the United States, be the straw that breaks Biden’s reelection chances in November; polls are now showing a definitive drop in Biden’s support? In 1982, as Israel was mounting a fierce attack on Beirut, Lebanon, President Ronald Reagan used “used frank and straightforward language” according to official statements, to let Israel know that a ceasefire was mandated or else… The ceasefire was quickly implemented. Does Biden have the will and underlying political support to use the threat of further cuts to US military major weapons shipments to Israel unless that humanitarian aid were resumed under a sustainable ceasefire? While Netanyahu is widely despised in Israel, public support there for continued military operations in Gaza and the West Bank remains strong.
I’m Peter Dekom, and when in doubt (is there doubt?), doing the right thing should be determinative... like saving thousands of innocent lives.
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