22 December 2024

Mind the Gap: U.S. Preferences and Israel’s War Conduct

Jeremy Pressman

Introduction

The Biden administration has firmly stood by Israel’s side for the past year. U.S. military and diplomatic support has been crucial to Israel’s conduct in its war in Gaza and will shape the legacy of this latest iteration of Israel-Palestine conflict.1

These U.S. decisions, which are completely divorced from the official U.S. policy of supporting a two-state solution, have meant aiding an expansionist Israeli state as it seeks to impose its exclusionary territorial vision on the Palestinian people. These decisions have also left an administration with a foreign policy record in the Middle East that has been heavily reliant on military means and stands in stark contrast to its initial desire to reduce the U.S. military presence in the region.

U.S.-manufactured weapons, whose export to Israel’s armed forces has been approved and often funded by the U.S. government, have been key to mass Israeli killing and societal destruction in Gaza. Israel’s military has killed at least 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, with over 95,000 wounded, and some estimates are much higher.2The Israeli military has hit every hospital in Gaza and destroyed apartment buildings, cultural institutions, mosques and churches, roads, schools, universities, and water and sewage facilities. It has killed unprecedented numbers of journalists and humanitarian workers.3


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