Joe Biden is heading to the Middle East for possibly the riskiest trip of his presidency. (File)
Washington:
Joe Biden heads to the Middle East on Tuesday for possibly the riskiest trip of his presidency, aiming to thread the needle between supporting Israel against Hamas, averting a catastrophe in Gaza and preventing a regional war.
The US president will fly to a war zone on Wednesday for high-stakes talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in key ally Israel, then head to Jordan for a quadruple summit with regional leaders.
The 80-year-old Biden’s diplomatic drive will be one of the biggest gambles of his long career, both politically and security, and a test of US influence in a tinderbox region.
“He comes here at a crucial time for Israel, for the region and for the world,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he announced Joe Biden’s visit during his own diplomatic marathon.
The New York Times called it a “journey full of risks”.
President Biden made a top-secret trip to war-torn Ukraine last year to express US support for the pro-Western country’s fight against the Russian invasion.
Despite frequent warnings about airstrikes, US officials say the security threat to Joe Biden in Israel is lower. But the political stakes of this visit are demonstrably much greater.
President Blinken said the president wanted to show “iron-strong” support for Israel after the Palestinian terror group Hamas stormed through the heavily fortified border with Gaza on October 7 and shot, stabbed and burned more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.
The show of solidarity is especially important in American thinking amid fears that Iran or its Lebanese ally Hezbollah could become involved. Washington has sent two aircraft carriers to the region to deter them.
However, the Democratic president carefully deliberated before accepting the invitation to visit from right-wing Netanyahu, who has ordered preparations for what is expected to be a bloody ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
The risk is that Joe Biden sees himself too closely involved in an Israeli invasion of Gaza, which is already being subjected to a devastating campaign of airstrikes that has leveled parts of the enclave and killed more than 2,700 people.
‘Right time’
Asked whether Washington expected Israel to wait until after President Biden’s trip to launch a ground offensive, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said “we are not dictating terms or operational directions to the Israelis.”
Joe Biden’s show of support for Israel also clashes with a potentially contradictory goal: the ongoing US and international efforts to alleviate the devastating impact of the war on Palestinian civilians.
He has increased pressure on Israel in recent days to protect civilian lives from the airstrikes and siege that is putting Gaza at risk of a humanitarian disaster.
“The president believes this is exactly the right time to go to Israel and Jordan,” Kirby told CNN on Tuesday.
President Biden will “speak to other leaders in the region about the humanitarian aid that we certainly want to see coming into Gaza, about Israeli plans and intentions for the future,” he added.
In Jordan, Joe Biden will meet King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt — the first two Arab countries to make peace with Israel — as well as Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, a Hamas enemy based in the West. Bank.
Talks with Sisi are likely to focus on his refusal so far to open the Rafah crossing to Palestinians who have gathered in southern Gaza as they flee the expected Israeli invasion.
The Jordanian royal court expressed hope that the quadruple summit could help revive the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel, which has been at a standstill for years.
The world, and US rivals such as China and Russia, will be closely watching the results of Biden’s trip.
However, the US president has dismissed questions about whether Washington would be overextended by supporting allies at war in both Israel and Ukraine.
“We are the United States of America for God’s sake. The most powerful nation in the history of the world,” Joe Biden said this weekend in an interview that aired on the CBS News program 60 Minutes.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
