Finding an exit strategy from Gaza has long been a critical goal for Netanyahu, but that required locating someone else fool enough to take the job.
There are a number of valid objections to Joe Biden’s plan to build a pier in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. First, Biden is treating Gaza as if its problem was that it lacks access to external aid, when in fact its problem is that Hamas controls the distribution of such aid and diverts it to support its fighters. That falsely implies that Israel, rather than Hamas, is responsible for poor living conditions in Gaza. In fact, more aid arriving from the West will just lengthen the war by keeping Hamas fed and fit.
Second, there is no reason to think the U.S. will gain any goodwill with the Gazans; to the contrary, there have been Gazans on social media destroying U.S.–air-dropped supplies to display their preference for starving over accepting American aid, and even conspiracy theories that American food aid is not halal.
Third, the pier will be a huge target for Hamas attacks, and that could either suck the U.S. further into the region or force a humiliating retreat reminiscent of our withdrawals from Beirut in the 1980s and Somalia in the 1990s. One need not have much imagination to picture the House holding “BenGaza” hearings after the predictable deaths of American servicemen. Not only are all of these totally foreseeable outcomes bad for American interests and worse for the safety of our military, they would all be politically disastrous for Biden.
Fourth, even apart from getting drawn into a choice between retribution and retreat, there is a real risk that the United States could be, in a fit of absent-mindedness, acquiring an unenviable responsibility for Gaza after the war. This is something we should resist, and certainly something Congress should not allow to happen without a vigorous public debate. If we accept now the premise that we need to “do something” to care for suffering Gazans, and that doing so requires American military presence to deliver aid — and if domestic political imperatives drive Biden and his party to take this stance — how will we avoid “mission creep” when the Israelis are finished with their military campaign against Hamas?
The question of who will govern Gaza after Hamas has been firmly routed and ousted as its government is a much thornier one than the war itself. It haunts Israel, which was happy to end its occupation of Gaza in 2005 — at which time it evicted its own people at gunpoint from the place — and which very much does not want to resume any sort of control over Gaza. But if Israelis won’t run the place, who will? The Palestinian Authority, which was driven with much bloodletting out of Gaza by Hamas in 2007, is only barely able to govern the West Bank (and not without Israeli involvement in security). The Egyptians want nothing do with Gaza. The United Nations is, in theory, the responsible international organization, but the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been deeply in bed with Hamas and has done an enormous amount to create the problem of Gaza as a modern equivalent to the Cell of Little Ease.
Noah Rothman notes that Israel has welcomed the pier proposal even though, as he correctly observes, its intent is “to indict Israel for failing to properly administer the provision of aid to Gaza’s beleaguered civilians” and it is “a logistically complex operation likely to frustrate Israel’s tactical objectives and postpone its ultimate victory over Hamas.” In fact, the Jerusalem Post reports that Benjamin Netanyahu is taking credit for the pier plan being his idea.
Noah suggests two reasons why Israel may warm to the pier: “Jerusalem would surely welcome America’s efforts to relieve it of some of the burden and risk associated with distributing humanitarian assistance, to say nothing of the blame it might offload onto American shoulders if (or, perhaps, when) something goes wrong,” and “maybe Israel’s defense minister is merely putting on a brave show of welcoming Biden’s intervention into the conflict in the interest of preserving relations with the United States.” These are both entirely plausible explanations. MEMRI’s Yigal Carmon, no fan of Netanyahu, goes further and argues that more supply from America could help reduce the influence of Iranian and Qatari sources of supply, thus weakening Hamas and helping Israel’s campaign against Rafah.
But there’s also a more devious argument: Netanyahu, who is himself in deep political trouble the instant the war ends and the case for a unity government dissolves, may be happy to see the United States drawn further into Gaza precisely because it could relieve Israel of that responsibility going forward. Which is the point at which our entirely proper support for Israel turns into something that is clearly against American interests, yet it might appeal to the “humanitarian intervention” school of the Left that sees it as a lesser evil than backing more war by Israel. Finding an Israeli exit strategy from Gaza has long been a critical goal for Netanyahu’s government, but that required locating someone else fool enough to take the job, yet at least minimally trustworthy for security. In Joe Biden, he may have spotted the sucker at the table.