Israel-Hamas Conflict: Why the US Will Carry Increasingly Less Weight in the Middle East

According to Sébastien Boussois, a researcher in international relations, Joe Biden’s difficulty in having his wishes heard for a cease-fire in Gaza is the result of U.S. disengagement in a number of conflict zones and, more broadly, an increasingly Asia-oriented world.

The gradual American retreat from a number of conflict zones around the world was announced by former President Barack Obama when he arrived at the White House in 2008. This marked the beginning of a long process that has since complicated the international scene. It started when the U.S. left Iraq in 2010. Following that was something of a retreat during Donald Trump’s term to re-center American policy toward its own interests under the slogan of “Make America Great Again.” This continued with President Joe Biden who executed the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Following the failure of the Camp David Summit in 2000, during President Bill Clinton’s term in office, Washington maintained its total support for Israel with no effort to revive peace negotiations that would have seen the establishment of a Palestinian state. Biden’s difficulty in having his wishes heard for a cease-fire in Gaza — faced with Benjamin Netanyahu’s deafness to his demands — is the result of two decades of overall disengagement on the matter.

Today, Biden is trying to get back in the game between Israel and the Palestinians. But it all seems out of control now. Washington’s full support of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, and its steadfast refusal for several weeks to explicitly call for a cease-fire, have weakened its ability to play the role of mediator this time around. Netanyahu’s admission of having deliberately strengthened Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas, considered an Israeli “collaborator” in security matters, has only brought more confusion and drama.

Over time, traditional Western actors have shown an inability to seal a definitive peace agreement. Though to this must be added their historical liabilities, an arrogance ill-perceived on the other side of the globe, the patent failures of Europe and the U.S. on numerous battlefields, the exportation of democracy, and a fight against terrorism that ring as obvious “imperialistic” posturing. Sadly, all of this will work against Israel in an increasingly Asia-oriented world.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Jewish state and it is going very badly. Surely there is a better way to commemorate this than the return of the war as it has played out over the past month. The attack on Oct. 7 against 1,400 Israeli citizens and the Israeli response that has so far claimed more than 10,000 lives reveal that no military solution has yet resulted in peace. Even worse, the radicalization of the Israeli political landscape is now confronted with the Islamization of the Palestinian issue in a total political impasse which presages painful years ahead for the two societies if no immediate de-escalation takes place to revive negotiations for a just and lasting peace. This means a just and lasting peace for both societies: security for Israel and a state for the Palestinians, without which all these deaths will once again be for nothing. This war must immediately lead to both the Israeli and Palestinian governments taking responsibility, with indispensable international support, so that three years from now more deaths are not added to past ones. It is clear the Americans, as historical negotiators, this time backed by Qatar, are struggling to make themselves heard.

When it comes down to it, the U.S. has never dared to moderate its Israeli ally, notably on the issue of the colonization of lands, which has for years hindered any possibility of reviving the question of a Palestinian state. For more than seven decades, while Palestinian territory has been shrinking, Israeli territory has been in constant expansion beyond the borders established by the United Nations, and far beyond the belief that a continuous, contiguous and viable Palestinian state could see the light of day. Today, the failure of the Israeli state to comply with dozens of U.N. resolutions, including its colonization of Palestinian territory, has shown and continues to show that multilateralism is weaker than ever. The U.S. is the first collateral victim of this, and its leadership is widely contested today.

The global system that emerged at the end of World War II, in the name of “never again,” has had its day. It was largely created by the West for the West and is in need of urgent reforms to integrate the new diplomacies in the world that matter. Informally, U.S. support as it has been for Israel could be complicated in the coming years. New powers in the East will not necessarily have the same interests in the region. Russia, already present in enemy Syria, and China, play major roles in blocking the U.N. Security Council’s Western plans around the world. Today, the U.S. no longer wins wars or brings peace. One need only make a list of a few of the tragic landscapes where Washington has come up short: Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Why should the Americans again be the only hope for Israelis and Palestinians?

The Global South, won over by big global powers like China (who brokered the “reconciliation” between Iran and Saudi Arabia this year, to everyone’s surprise), Russia and Brazil could someday have a role to play — like it or not — to manage crises in their own region, as could countries in the Middle East, notably, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. On the Israeli-Palestinian question, there is a risk of new, untested actors emerging who could win the confidence of parties against a U.S. still trying to gain a foothold, or actors who, beyond their agendas, will have to offer serious pledges to deliver on “their” peace.

Sébastien Boussois holds a doctorate in political science, is a researcher on the Arab world and geopolitics, teaches international relations and is a scientific collaborator at Université Libre de Bruxelles; Equipe Sécurité Défense, Paris; and the Nordic Center for Conflict Transformation, Stockholm.