Politics

The Arab world is of immense importance to the United States, no doubt for the vast natural resources supply (The United States remained a net crude oil importer in 2022, importing about 6.28 million b/d of crude oil)( the total petroleum imports were about 8.33 million b/d until 2022). The US is one of the largest agricultural supply partners, and consumer food products exports each grew by 11% until 2021 from 6% in 2005-06 to the GCC countries. For the US, vital among a mix of some of these are long-term military-strategic goals and some others, such as securing the US longstanding ally in the region, i.e., Israel, countering the Soviet-Iran influence in the broader region of the Middle East and uninterrupted flow of energy resources is too no less crucial. The United States has sought to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which has been a major driver of instability in the broad list of regional dynamics, to obtain these strategic objectives while balancing its support for Israel and pushing for broader regional stability. However, US interest in resolving the conflict has waned in successive administrations. The Arab Spring, the rise of militant organizations, and the increase of Iran’s influence in the region further waned the US interests. The US disengagement in the region emboldened regional players such as Iran and its proxies under the umbrella of “axis-of-resistance” to deter US interests, including Israel. But the US traditional role of acting in a balanced way, securing Israel while maintaining strong relationships with Arab countries, remains an enduring objective of the American foreign policy agenda. Relations with Iran and the Arab Gulf states no longer seem to hinge on Israel-Palestinian issues, making the conflict even less of a priority.

Seeds of Discord: Past In Perspective

The Balfour Declaration 1917

The Balfour Declaration is named after Arthur Balfour, a British foreign secretary during WWI. It is a public statement of the British government to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain And Ireland. It announced the establishment of a “national home” for Jewish people in Palestine, which was then ruled under the Ottoman Empire with a small Jewish population.

“The declaration marked the beginning of a century-long colonial war in Palestine”(Prof Rashid Khalidi)

In 2017, Palestinians across the globe marched against the worst declaration to them during the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. To a substantial number of historians, this declaration saw a bitter seed of ethnic tension, later proved by subsequent events of the wars, extreme violence, and expulsion of the Palestinian population. To date, the pattern of bloodshed continues, and many more are lost in this vicious cycle. Plenty of reasons, such as the British desire to rally the support of Jews around the world in WWI, are associated with the declaration and the subsequent emigration of the Jews from around the world to the land of Palestine. In the background, great Britain kept the Jews well-prepared for the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine. So, the British left the mandate(of the Palestinian territory)to the UN. It devised the partition plan under the United Nations resolution.

Britians’ Motives: To many, the establishment of Israel was not an emotional decision but, in fact, of the geographical significance to advance the British Empire’s interests, particularly securing the Suez Canal’s importance for energy commodities and trade since it opened Europe to Asia and the Middle East.

The Direct Consequences: This decision is regarded as gunpoint on the heads of Palestinians. The Arabs never accepted this, and the early wars between Israel and the Arab countries broke out due to the establishment of an entity called Israel. It was the culmination of tension between the two ethnic communities because the 1948 UN resolution blindly imposed a plan of the establishment of Israel over the indigenous Palestinian population that never accepted it. More than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes within Palestine’s borders, an event known as the ‘Nakba’ which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the force-displacement and disposition of the indigenous Palestinian population in the event of war.

U.S. Influence Of 20th Century Politics

Cold War Dynamics: Shaping the Region

In the mid-20th century, as the world grappled with Cold War tensions, known as the era of making alliances by great powers. The Cold War dynamics were not just a backdrop but an active force shaping the destiny of nations. The echoes of political rivalries reached the heart of the Middle East, leaving an indelible mark on the region we now know as Israel and Palestine. The strategic significance of the Middle East became a focal point.

The Birth of Israel And Palestinians Delusion Of Statehood: The birth of Israel in 1948, amidst the Cold War’s political chess game, set the stage for enduring conflict and regional transformation. With their vested interests, the two superpowers fueled tensions and alliances, creating complex webs of countering one another and heightening enmities. The geopolitical maneuvering in this period laid the foundation for the challenges that persist in the Israel-Palestine region today. Cold War rivalries cast a long shadow on the struggles and aspirations of the people of Palestine for statehood. The unipolar global orders ( after the Cold War, the US continued to dominate world politics ) have manipulated the regional dynamics for its benefit, maintaining the status quo. However, in very few instances, the US strived wholeheartedly, such as the two Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995 (the peace process directly negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization( PLO), representatives agreed during the Camp David Summits in 1978). The peace process, however, failed as the far-right Israelis and militant Palestinian organizations opposed the Oslo Accords.

American Intervention: A Double-Edged Sword

In the historical narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict, American involvement unfolds as a pivotal chapter. In the Middle East, the US sought to promote democracy but simultaneously tried to maintain stability within the existing orders. This delicate balancing often sets the conflict’s historical contours with positive and challenging implications. To the experts in regional affairs, including those in the power corridors, it is just a call away for the US president to change the course of history in the Middle East by kicking a direct diplomatic process(due to US leveraging over Israel) to end the long-standing unresolved issue between Israel and Palestine authorities. But the US continues to somewhat read the region through its global power lens that, unfortunately, is very biased, devastating for its moral authority, and imploded the concept of International law or any statute to benefit its friend, Israel. Despite ongoing efforts(like the Abraham Accords to normalize Israel’s relations with the regional countries), a resolution to the conflict remains elusive, with the U.S. continuing to play an essential role in the region’s diplomatic landscape.

U.S. Policy Shifts In The Region

US foreign policy is undergoing a shift in priorities, so global power dynamics are shifting with it. After prolonged preoccupation with the Middle East, the U.S. has signaled a declining interest in the region. We can broadly summarise the US policy shifts as direct interventions and indirect support to its regional allies.
Direct Interventions Or Involvements: The Gulf War of 1991 was the first major US direct involvement in Middle East affairs (in 1990, Saddam Hussein attacked a tiny state of Kuwait, rich with natural resources vital to OPEC oil production). The US led the military with coalition forces to regain Kuwaits’ sovereignty. In 2003, the US-Iraq war was another inflection point in the US foreign policy (the US and NATO coalition, mainly the UK, invaded Iraq, blaming it for secretly building weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which later proved grossly erroneous and misleading). US withdrawal from Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Acton (JCPOA P5+1). In 2018, the US under President Donald Trump withdrew from the multilaterally signed agreement, claiming it failed to curtail Iran’s missile program and regional influence. For many, its consequences are regional instability as Iran built up an axis of deterrence against US-Israel strategic military hegemony and imminent aggression against it. In another war effort, the US went to the battlefield against ISIS in 2018 in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The military campaign aimed at defeating the Islamic State’s war achievements in the Iraq-Syria regions. No doubt, the military operation achieved its maximum objectives in liberating people and a large territory from ISIS occupation, but strategic errors of mass casualties and widespread destruction again bred breathing grounds for another outlawed terrorist group as ISIS.
Indirect Involvements: The US may not directly supply arms and ammunition to its allies in the region to clamp down upon its adversaries. It supported an unpopular Saudi military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. The US is indirectly involved in the Syrian Civil War by supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF( a collection of militant groups that aims to establish secular Syria battling against ISIS but also against Asad’s forces and Turkish interests). The traditional US role of regime change in Turkey in 2016 has widely come to the fore. The Fethullists were overtly supported by the US(if not materially, then surely ideologically and morally) as its leadership stayed there and controlled the Gülen Movement.

Conflict Escalation: US Strategic Transformation And Rising Tensions

In the highly volatile climate, the Israel-Palestine conflict presents the escalation, the raw intensity in complexities of rising hostilities threshold. As tensions surge, the underneath elements peel back the layers, exposing the human stories, geopolitical intricacies, and the pressing need for understanding amid the escalating turmoil. Some very recent US foreign policy initiatives in the Israel-Palestine conflict injected fuel into the already historically stormy atmosphere. In the following, those are discussed.

The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the relocation of the US embassy.

Key Points
. The UN recognizes East Jerusalem ( and the West Bank as a whole) as the capital of the future Palestinian state. However, the majority of UN members hold the status shall be determined according to the final negotiated agreement between the two communities.
. Jerusalem holds significant importance from a religious point of view for all three religions: Christians, Muslims, and Jewish populations. The issue is interactable due to the holy sites of Abrahamic religions within Jerusalem and the access to them for performing rituals.
.The US maintained its embassy in Tel Aviv( now shifted to Jerusalem) to keep its status as a principal broker and avoid prejudging the conflict. But that decision turned the US position as keeping a thumb on the scale on Isreal’s side, thus pending the final status of Jerusalem.
Consequences Aftermath:
President Trump’s declaration, “Today we acknowledge the obvious, Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” said D. Trump in 2017. This shifted decades of US policy maintaining an embassy mission in Tel Aviv. It reversed decades-old US policy of maintaining the balance and avoided any prejudgement until Israel-Palestine agreed on solving the issue through negotiations.
US unilateral move met with widespread condemnations from the international community, particularly from regional capitals. The move resulted in the breakdown of diplomatic efforts to bring peace to the region, and violence escalated in Palestinian territories and Jerusalem, leading to limited war between Hamas and Israel. Important to remember is that Palestinians believe the US decision was made in the absence of talks and with a one-sided understanding of the issue. This decision, in the views of many, ends the prospects of peace between Israel-Palestine. The stalled peace process from then and Israel’s continued settlement in the city of Jerusalem led to 2023 Hamas’s terrorist attacks and Israel’s genocidal moves in Gaza.

Abraham Accords And Its Impacts On Regional Dynamics.
The Abraham Accords were signed between Israel-UAE and Israel-Bahrain in 2020. The US was a principal mediating party to it. The Abraham Accords are the series of Israel-Arab normalization initiatives that started in September 2020 with the Israel-UAE normalization, followed by many regional arab and non-arab states.
The Abraham Accords barely mentioned( rather in some vague terms) the plight of the Palestinian struggle and negotiated settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Very few in the Islamic world, like Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who charged that the signers had “lost their moral compass,” and Jordan’s King Abdullah, who declared that “no architecture for regional security and development can stand over the burning ashes of this conflict.”
In its foundational and cynical assumption, the Accords would somehow safely ignore and forget the Palestinian cause by both the regional players and the international community. The US Department Of Homeland Security apparatus under Trump warned the move could inflame waves of violence. The full spectrum could be seen from the last few months in the Israel-Palestine region. Such a flawed plot was bound to result in the killing of masses from both sides at an unprecedented level never seen before as it put behind the decades-old challenging conflict, thinking it no longer required efforts and recognition.
Biden Administration’s Approach To The Conflict And Its Efforts To Restore Diplomacy.
The Biden administration continued on D. Trump’s roadmap of fueling diplomatic efforts to secure Israel through engaging its neighbors diplomatically with no concrete steps to bring Israel to accept the two-state solution.
The present administration sustained funding UNRWA( until it cut the supply of funds with Israel’s unverified claims of members from the said agency being found involved in Hamas Oct 7 attacks). ( UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). The mandate of the agency is the relief and human development of Palestinian Refugees, those expelled during the Nakaba in 1948 or others forcibly expelled until this day by Israel.
The Biden administration continued to supply arms and munition to Israel that, to some former officials, violated US own human rights laws. The administration is working on traditional-centric pro-Israel policies until the significant events of Oct, 7 took place. The Biden administration shows reluctance to stress Netanyahu for concessions(despite Israel’s closest ally) that give Israel’s military( IDF) indication to go for Rafah ground invasion ( Rafah is the southern city of Gaza and the last refuge of more than 1.5 million war-displaced population). Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu grows when the US does not veto a Security Council resolution regarding the unfolding catastrophe caused by Israel’s indiscriminate aerial bombardment and ground battle. Many believe that the US enjoys some real incentives to change Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian population, such as proportionate and discriminate responses avoiding Israel’s collective punishment war strategy of the Palestinians and forcing Israel not to break the civil orders in Gaza that resulted in the widespread loss of Palestinians lives due to lack of basic foods, not to target medical facilities, immune under international laws and supply of medicines, the dramatic amount of aid that needs inflow to the strip which passes through Israel rigorous checking process in place and opening more entry points to Palestine and avoid Israel officials from committing genocidal statements that caused practical harm to innocent Palestinians lives. Biden continues to maintain commitments to Israel’s security, and the Abraham Accords are some of the strategic diplomatic objectives the US desires to attain. Still, he also maintains the two-state solution mantra with no real prospects in view.

Challenges and Opportunities

Palestinian Statehood Aspirations And The Stumbling Blocks
Israel’s expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem has fueled, and will, a pattern of violence. The settlement activities are illegal under international law. UN resolutions must be implemented to make the US an obstacle, and its position is a significant factor in the conflict. The continued Israeli expansionist policy not only causes displacement but also signs of no Palestinian statehood in the future. Therefore, it is bound to keep violence alive in the region as the settlers rampage Palestinians’ homes and confiscate their properties, fueling terror among the Palestinian population.
Two-State Solution
The two-state solution is advocated as the single feasible pathway to bring permanent security to Israel and bring Palestinians its state aspiration come true. It requires both parties to make difficult compromises but urgent to stop the bloodshed.
One-State Solution
As in the existing form, Palestinians are highly segregated in the occupied territories, worse than the South African apartheid apparatus. The future is not promising under one state for Palestinians as ethnic tension, a logical outcome of it, carries a huge weight in the international community. Such a state will deprive Palestinians of freedom, dignity, and human rights.
United Nations In The Face Of Criticism
United Nations is criticized for the structural failure of its system. The UN Security Council is under a storm for ineffective implementation of UN resolutions to resolve the conflict. The power imbalance within the body has deadlocked the governing structure of the UN bodies: all the 193 members carry equal vote in the General Assembly and in the SC 5 of its permanent members possess veto power to put any resolution null and void no matter how crucial is it in ramifications. A single veto member can defeat the vast majority of states.
During the ongoing conflict, the US too vetoed or abstained from most of the early calls for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. Procedurally, it is the Security Council that decides on UN intervention. Therefore, it is up to a single power out of permanent members to decide when a situation requires UN intervention in a conflict to stop crimes or crimes against humanity. In most of the instances during this conflict, The US showed extreme forms of immorality towards human losses and left a vacuum to benefit Israel even when global opinion propelled the US to stop the carnage.

Also, Read Call for A Collective Stance: Muslim World And The Israeli-Palestine Conflict