It appears that the current pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas will continue for at least another two days. Hamas's plan to stretch out the release of hostages to gain time for the left to pressure Biden to get Israel to end the war has, so far, not worked. Biden has remained steadfast in his support for the Jewish state.
Until now.
Feeling the heat from his own party's left wing as well as the international community, Biden is slowly pulling back from his previous unqualified support for Israel and is now looking to qualify that support and perhaps even condition military aid on Israel giving in to American demands that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exercise restraint in trying to destroy Hama.
"You cannot have the sort of scale of displacement that took place in the north replicated in the south," a senior administration official said on a call with reporters. "It can't happen, which means that the manner of the campaign has to be extremely carefully thought through to minimize this consequence of further, significant displacement."
The administration's concern is that by leveling the Gaza Strip, North, and South, "it would cause a crisis beyond the ability of any humanitarian support network," the official said.
That may be true. Trying to feed, clothe, and house 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza would be a humanitarian catastrophe.
But Israel is up against a wall. Hamas started this war in the most savage, brutal way possible. It is daring Israel to respond in kind, knowing that the friends of Hamas and the Palestinians will play the "morality card" early and often.
Israel's response is not on the same moral plane as Hamas's sickening atrocities. But few see it that way, and Biden is feeling the heat from friend and foe alike.
Quite simply, Biden is losing heart. And he's trying to micromanage the war, giving Netanyahu advice on how to fight it.
It's advice that seems silly when you think about it.
Secretary Austin stresses to his Israeli defense counterpart, Yoav Gallant, the “importance of conducting operations in accordance with the laws of armed conflict, protecting civilians, and assuring that aid continues to get into Gaza,” the Pentagon spokesman, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, told reporters Tuesday.
“We certainly do not want to see innocent civilians being harmed or impacted to a greater extent than they have been already,” General Ryder added, though that is easier said than done. During the war against ISIS a decade ago, an estimated 40,000 people were killed at Mosul, Iraq, including an estimated 9,000 civilians. At least 2,400 civilians were also killed at Raqqa, Syria, which was flattened by air bombardments.
Obviously, Israel is not going to fight this war with one hand tied behind its back. Taking suggestions from America's idiotic secretary of defense would be suicidal. And why the administration isn't naming Hamas as the responsible party for civilian deaths in this conflict says a lot about the feelings of many in the administration whose sympathies are definitely not with Israel.
Nevertheless, Israel seems prepared to at least try to accede to America's concerns about how to fight the war when it moves to the south.
"We have reinforced this in very clear language with the government of Israel — very important that the conduct of the Israeli campaign when it moves to the south, must be done in a way that is to a maximum extent not designed to produce significant further displacement of persons," the official added.
Naturally, Hamas's first step is to make sure it forces Israel to kill a lot of civilians by getting as close as it can to as many as possible. Hamas would consider it a tremendous victory if it could actually drive a wedge between the U.S. and Israel. And if it means Hamas fighters hiding as much as possible among civilians and having Israel kill a lot of innocent women and children, so be it.
So far, the U.S. has refused to criticize Israel for not working hard to release American hostages. So far, just one American has been released by Hamas with eight or nine more still held captive.
"So, there's no indication that Hamas is trying to play some sort of game here in terms of the Americans. I mean, I think it's important to remember a couple of things. One, the pool of Americans is pretty small, and the pool of Americans that qualify right now, women and children is smaller, still. Number two, we can't just assume that Hamas has ready access to everybody in a moment's notice, or that all the Americans are being held by Hamas, and certainly not that they're in the same place," he added.
Of course, Hamas is "playing games" with our hostages. At least the hostages it controls. To believe otherwise is incredibly naive. This is a game of chess, and Hamas is three moves ahead of the Biden administration.
