US stance on Israeli-Palestinian conflict under fire, threatens regional stability

ADDING FUEL TO THE FIRE

On Wednesday, Biden arrived in Israel to demonstrate his support for Israel, just hours after an explosion at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds, further escalating tensions and resulting in the cancellation of a summit with Arab leaders.

The cancellation of the summit, which cut Biden's Middle East tour to a "mini visit" lasting less than eight hours, is seen as "an obvious message that the Arab countries don't welcome the US president," said Mokhtar Gobashy, deputy chairman of the Cairo-based Arab Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Gobashy stated that the Arab world is not happy with the White House's "unfair" foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine, adding that it has a track record of adopting "unjust" foreign policies to serve its own interests.

"Anyone who sees one side as entirely blameless and the other as exclusively at fault has lost the credibility to act as an impartial arbiter," the Egyptian scholar noted.

While the United States presented itself as a main sponsor of the Palestine-Israel negotiations, it has in fact consistently failed to uphold its commitments over the years.

The pledges made by the Biden administration, such as advocating Israeli-Palestinian peace, reopening the consulate general responsible for Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem, and halting the Israeli settlement expansion, have remained unattended to. Despite endorsing a "two-state solution," the administration has taken little action toward achieving this goal.

"Washington does not care about what Arabs want" and only acts to serve its interests, said Markram Rabah, an academic at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.

"What the United States has done now is calling for war," he said, noting that with two US aircraft carriers patrolling the Mediterranean Sea, the region is now at a greater risk of a potential broader conflict than ever before.

Eyal Pinko, a political analyst at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar Ilan University in Israel, also warned against a possible spillover of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

He pointed out that should a ground offensive in Gaza begin, a scenario many anticipate in the coming days, Palestinians in the West Bank, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and even the Houthis in Yemen will probably become involved in the conflict.