United States-Israel, an alliance that goes further …

A historical and strategic determinism of mutual political convenience always produces the same result Israel and the United States. They come and go together, but not only on the sensitive question of Palestine. Joe Biden appears today as a dove alongside Donald Trump but his career proves the opposite. The former president spoke of the “weakness” of his successor for not having supported the government of Benjamin Netanyahu a few days before the start of his Operation Guardian of the Wall. But the United States did not remain silent: it blocked a subsequent United Nations Security Council resolution that called for an end to hostilities amid Israel’s offensive against the Gaza Strip.

Who is the real Biden can be controversial. But the facts show Washington’s unconditional support for its main economic and military partner in the Middle East since 1967, when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. The current president already said it 35 years ago in the Senate: “If there was no Israel, the United States would have to invent one to protect our interests in the region”. It was June 5, 1986. Biden lost his hair but not the ideas he had.

The ties between the two countries are unalterable beyond the presidents and their governments. They shrunk in the midst of the Cold War and their momentum reached the status with which they are known today. Their geopolitical interests are above all else. Trump was sort of a crusader in the Holy Land, but Biden isn’t one of the mages either. One difference is that the former had withdrawn social assistance from Palestine in August 2018.in one. Last April, the Democratic president returned to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA) – for its acronym in English – the funds he had taken from it. Sand they will allocate 150 million dollars to this organization, 75 more for humanitarian aid in the West Bank and Gaza and 10 more to support the peace process.

Figures for financial aid Israel receives from the United States have reached $ 3 billion a year, according to USAID data, the World Energy Agency for the proclaimed “international development”. While the difference in the resources Washington allocates to its ally versus the Palestinian Authority is incomparable, in Israel they have complained about the step Biden has taken with the Refugee Aid Agency. Gilad Erdan, his ambassador to the United States and to the UN – he fulfills the dual function – commented last month, quoted by several international agencies: “I expressed my disappointment and my objection to the decision to renew the funding. of UNRWA without first undertaking certain reforms, including stopping incitement and removing anti-Semitic content from their educational program.

What is often overlooked in this symbiotic relationship is its military hegemony in the region. In September 2017 and after Trump had already been in power for nine months, the United States opened the first permanent base in his country inside a facility, where the Israeli Air Academy operates, in the west of the towns of Dimona and Yerujam., In the Negev desert. . Talks for its opening had started under the administration of Barack Obama, of which Biden was his vice president. The Ezzeddin al-Qassam Brigades, a military wing of Hamas, reported a rocket attack on Dimona. A nuclear research center is working there. The United States also has a radar east of that city with which it monitors missile launches in the region, according to the defense.com page.

Israeli-American military cooperation is so naturalized that it fuels like few alliances with the arms industry based in the two countries. Any parallel intended to be drawn with Hamas’s responsiveness in Palestine seems like a light exercise. Military scholar Paul Rogers wrote an in-depth article on the Open Democracy website titled: “When Israel-Gaza Confrontation Ends, Arms Industry Is the Only Winner.”

The author explains that “Israeli companies will be particularly interested in giving the best possible brilliance to the performance of weapons, especially the Iron Dome system, as they aim to increase sales of their“ combat proven ”weapons. Since Israeli companies work closely with American companies, this will be a joint process with the US military lobby. “

The most serious humanitarian problem that this entity does not perceive on its radar is what remains behind the bombs which have collapsed entire buildings in Gaza or the rockets which left the strip and caused damage in towns in the south. from Israel. Gaza’s health ministry said 232 Palestinians – including 63 children – were killed in Israeli shelling, while across the fortified border there were 12 dead. An additional consequence reported by Hamas is the 120,000 displaced people. Out of a total population of the Strip of just over 2 million inhabitants, they represent nearly 5% of this figure.

Another key consequence of this escalation is how the peaceful but suspicious coexistence of Israelis and Arabs or Palestinians has suffered in various cities. The latter have learned one thing from previous wars with the Jewish state: They will not withdraw from their lands even if right-wing Netanyahu’s persistent and escalated colonization campaign persists. The Prime Minister of Israel has shown with his hawkish policies that he does not want two states. This time, he gave free rein to the occupation of areas near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in disputed Jerusalem.

He did not choose the days at random to do it. It was at the end of Ramadan, and also on May 15, that the Palestinians suffered the Nakba – in Arabic it means catastrophe – which recalls the expulsion and exodus of their people between June 1946 and May 1948 in the middle of the Arab-Israeli war. War.

Biden calls for ceasefire after Israel’s disproportionate retaliation progresses far enough against Hamas rockets fired from besieged and impoverished Gaza. Trump would have applauded this offensive from a more contemplative stance. This role-playing game does not alter the monolithic, enduring alliance built by the governments of Washington and Jerusalem almost six decades ago.

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