Israel invaded Rafah, a city that marks the southern border crossing with Gaza Egypt launched a military offensive on May 7, 2024, which the US and others have warned Israel to not proceed.
President Joe Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 6 against the expansion of the Gaza war to Rafah and suggested that it may lead to a change in US policy towards Israel. A disagreement over learn how to handle the war in Gaza was the trigger for the US put a stop on shipping US-made bombs sent to Israel, based on Israeli officials and a U.S. official quoted in Politico, Axios and The Wall Street Journal.
Rafah is one in all the few places in Gaza that was not destroyed within the Gaza War. It can be a refuge for greater than 1,000,000 Palestiniansabout half of them are children displaced from their homes elsewhere within the Gaza Strip resulting from the conflict.
US politics and society editor Amy Lieberman spoke to The Conversation Gregory TrevertonChairman of the National Intelligence Council under the Obama administration and a national security scholar on the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences to grasp the boundaries of U.S. political influence in influencing Israel's seven-month war with Hamas.
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Is the US warning to Israel typical of its diplomatic relations?
This is actually not without precedent. There have been many U.S. presidents and secretaries of state who’ve been frustrated about anything involving Israel, at the very least for a while the war of 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab countries. The US pressured Israel to hitch a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution on the time – one sponsored by each the US and the Soviet Union – but Israel declined for a time.
Other presidents have been in a position to say, “Do this,” and the Israeli comeback has at all times been, “Not quite yet.” This episode, while very obvious, is hardly unique.
Countries are allies because their interests overlap but usually are not equivalent. U.S. history is affected by allies who succeeded in doing what they wanted, not what we wanted them to do.
Years ago, after I was on the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London discussing the difficulties of coping with allies, let alone enemies, a beautiful researcher who focused on Israel remarked: “Who ever said it was easy “Be a… superpower!” Biden would understand this remark.
As Israeli politics and leadership have modified as far to the preciselots of the people in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition I don't really care concerning the USA and what they need. Netanyahu is now heavily depending on the far right for his own political survival, so he’s prone to take heed to his right wing, not the US
So how much political influence does the US even have over Israel?
I believe at this point it's really time for the US to say it's going to query arms sales to Israel. Israel then goes to Rafah The US said specifically Please don’t do that without ensuring which you could ensure the protection of most Gazans. This doesn’t necessarily require drawing a red line – which is frequently not very effective – but moderately a transparent warning that this decision may have future effects on arms transfers.
The other problem is that while one might assume that Israel is excited about learn how to govern Gaza after the war, there continues to be no clear public vision of what the tip game will probably be. How is that this purported to end?
Meanwhile, this escalation is sure to proceed polarizing American public opinion This might be one more reason for the US to attempt to end the war as quickly as possible.
The US has reportedly decided to stop sending bombs to Israel. Can this influence Israel's behavior in war?
In the short term it probably doesn't matter much, but psychologically it could make a difference in the long run if the guns were stopped. Israel is the most important recipient of US foreign aid and has received more US military aid than every other country since World War II. By early March this 12 months, the US had greater than earned it 100 arms deliveries to Israel since Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Israel now risks an escalating confrontation with Hezbollah, a militant group in Lebanon to the north. It appears to be in Israel's interest to not expand the conflict, but to limit it.
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Given this, why do you think that Israel is so wanting to advance into Rafah?
There is a sense across the Israeli political spectrum that the invasion of Rafah should be carried out and accomplished Order to eradicate Hamas. The problem is that we never knew exactly what ending meant. And most of us within the national security field imagine that there isn’t any way Israel can completely eradicate Hamas.
Before October 2023, Hamas was never popular in Gaza since it didn’t govern properly, however the Israeli attack was made it more popularparticularly within the West Bank, for standing as much as Israel and putting the issues of the Palestinians back on the agenda after the world, including the Arab world, had forgotten about it.
The idea of eradicating Hamas still appears to be on the minds of all Israelis. So if one assumed that the remaining Hamas leaders were in Rafah, then they thought that was the case, that they might proceed with the attack.
What impact does Israel's invasion of Rafah have on national security?
It results in more instability and increases the danger of war expanding. Even if Iran doesn’t respond, it is probably going that a few of its proxies, akin to Hezbollah, will do something that might exacerbate this conflict. We should use the term “proxy” with caution since the United States knows from experience that you simply cannot necessarily control proxy governments or militias. But it seems as if it is a sort of invitation, at the very least to Iran's proxies, to escalate the conflict.
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