On Tuesday evening, the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, was preparing for a trip to Tel Aviv and Amman. It was supposed to be one of the most demanding and risky diplomatic missions of his career with the aim of reconciling, or at least bringing closer, the irreconcilable, what separates decades of mutual conflicts and killings. His Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had been traveling from one Middle Eastern country to another for days before and was preparing the grand finale for Biden.
Biden belongs to the old breed of politicians who believe in face-to-face negotiations, who believe that video links and phone conversations cannot replace physical meetings. Especially when it comes to crisis situations.
And then, before he got on the plane on Tuesday night, Al Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip was hit and everything changed in a second. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said at least 500 people had been killed, accusing Israel of a "war crime" and "genocide". Similar stormy reactions and accusations came one after the other from all over the Arab world. Protests against the "Israeli occupier" and "Jewish killers" were organized in Tehran, Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, the West Bank, East Jerusalem... A real eruption of anger against Israel is now shaking the Middle East.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning, accused not only Israel, but also the countries that support it of a cover-up and canceled the meeting with Biden. The same was done by the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who even earlier accused Israel of carrying out "collective reprisals against the Palestinians" in the Gaza Strip. And then King Abdullah II of Jordan canceled his hospitality even before this tragic event of a diplomatically very tricky meeting.
After the Gaza hospital massacre, no Arab leader can afford to be caught talking to a US president who "staunchly" supports Israel, who warns the enemies of the Jewish state not to attempt to exploit Israel's current weakness, which threateningly sends aircraft carriers to the region, which justifies "Israel's right to self-defense" and sends it weapons and ammunition so that it can continue airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
Biden's two-dimensional tour became, while he was on the plane, one-dimensional - it turned into support for Israel and a warning "that America will respond strongly to any attempt by Iran, Hezbollah and others to expand the conflict and open a second front against Israel," he explained to Voice of America senior associate Middle East Institute in Washington Gerald Firestein, who was also the US ambassador to Yemen in the period from 2010 to 2013
Perception of truth
Although Israel denies all accusations that it is responsible for the destruction of the hospital and provides alleged evidence that it was the result of a premature rocket launched by the Islamic Jihad from Gaza on Israel, politically speaking, revealing the truth about who is responsible for it is irrelevant.
After the airstrikes that have not stopped since October 7 and killed at least 3.000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, among them, according to the local Ministry, over 700 children, after the images of the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the death and despair of Gazans circulating around the world, the perception of the truth of a side cannot change anything the opposing side says. The Israelis are convinced that "Palestinian terrorists" are capable of killing their own people to achieve their goal, and the Arabs that the Israelis do not shy away from knowingly killing Palestinian civilians.
In other words: everyone will believe what they want to believe.
Ubrzanje
Biden said after the destruction of the hospital that he was "appalled" and "deeply shaken" by the "explosion" and the "terrible loss of human life."
And further: "The United States is unequivocally committed to the protection of civilians in any conflict, and we grieve for the patients, medical personnel, and other innocent people who were killed or wounded in this tragedy."
Biden, however, will have no choice but to trust the investigation of his Israeli allies in Tel Aviv.
The bloodshed in the Al Ahli Arab hospital could speed up the course of events: Israel, by postponing the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip and the daily, if unintentional, killing of Palestinian civilians loses support in the West and adds fuel to the fire of the Arab world's anger in jets; whatever the israeli army is up to massing 360.000 troops along the border with gaza, it had better do it soon.
And if Hezbollah was looking for an excuse to get involved in the conflict, it won't find a better one than this. This Lebanese Islamic militia announced today Wednesday as a day of "unprecedented rage" directed at Israel and accused the US of bearing "full and direct responsibility" for the massacre in Gaza. The leadership of Iran actually speaks through Hezbollah.
And the countries of the region, which until now have been quite restrained in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, raised their voices loudly. Saudi Arabia strongly condemned the "heinous crime" it attributed to Israel; The United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain also blamed Israel for the rocket attack on the hospital.
The Emirates and Bahrain signed "historic" peace treaties with Israel three years ago. That example should have been followed by Saudi Arabia and Morocco, everything had already been prepared through America, and now it will very likely fall into the water for an indefinite period of time.
In this situation, Biden has no choice but to firmly stand by Israel, which will have a negative impact on the US's relationship with its Middle Eastern allies. Iran and Russia are watching all this.
The stage is set for a larger-scale conflict.
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