This commentary is by Haviland Smith is a long-retired CIA officer who served over five years in the Middle East.
If you look carefully at the pictures of the Gaza Strip taken after the recent 11-day conflict with Israel, you will appreciate the extraordinary damage that was done to the Gazan infrastructure.
We were told by the Israelis that this damage was inflicted largely on facilities created by the Palestinians to support their conflict with Israel — Gazan tunnels for safely transporting combatants and weaponry, missile launch sites, etc.
What has become a bit more clear is that, quite possibly at the request of the Israelis, the U.S. government held off on its push for a cease-fire. The Biden administration also blocked several attempts by the United Nations Security Council to release a statement demanding a cease-fire. With no one insisting they stop the conflict, the Israelis have been able to accomplish all their military goals as well as the bonus dismemberment of much of the Gaza infrastructure.
The United States made its choice years ago to support the Israeli government over the Palestinians and has maintained that position in the face of almost endless findings by international courts and other bodies that much of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians has been illegal.
It is no surprise, therefore, that this recent conflict broke out over the appropriation of Palestinian-owned properties by the Israelis. The resulting rocket attacks — basically the only violent weapon the Gazans have — gave the Israelis what they considered to be sufficient license to wage their dominant war against the Gazans. And they did.
It is easy to understand, given the extraordinary military imbalance between the Israelis and the Palestinians, that Israel would prevail militarily in any ensuing conflict, as they always have and always will.
The only difference here is that, even though they had total military superiority, the Israelis needed time to launch their aircraft and rockets to destroy as much of the Palestinian military establishment as possible,as well as major chunks of the Gazan infrastructure.
It seems quite likely that, possibly for the first time ever, a United States government was directly involved by simply not calling immediately for a cease-fire which, history tells us, would have stopped the conflict in its tracks before the Israelis had accomplished all their goals, goals which clearly have wreaked havoc on the Palestinians in Gaza.
American views on the Middle East have been in flux for the past few years, driven both by endless, questionable Israeli moves against the Palestinians and by a disenchantment with the Israeli president, Bibi Netanyahu.
Our youth and parts of the Democratic Party have begun to move from our historical “support Israel at any cost” toward a fairer, more even-handed policy. If that trend continues, which it may well, the kind of semi-covert support for Israeli policy, as we may be seeing it here, will not find favor as a critical element in U.S. Middle East policy.
