Israel contested Hamas accusations that an Israeli missile struck the grounds of a hospital in the Gaza Strip, an attack that killed hundreds of Palestinians and undercut US President Joe Biden’s shuttle diplomacy meant to emphasize support for Israel and persuade Arab countries he also aims to help Palestinians.
The nighttime explosion in a parking lot and garden of the city of Gaza’s Ahly Arab hospital killed scores of men, women and children who had taken refuge there in the belief it was safe from the air and artillery war raging beyond.
On Tuesday, Hamas, the hardened armed enemy of Israel that rules Gaza, said the Israelis fired the missile. Herzl Halevi, Israel’s military chief of staff, said the missile was launched by Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian armed group, and went awry and hit the hospital.
On Wednesday, an Israeli military spokesperson said Islamic Jihad fired a primitive missile toward Israel from a nearby cemetery but it struck the hospital parking lot instead. Part of the defense was somewhat self-accusatory. If it had been an Israeli missile used on Gaza, the damage would have been much greater.
So far the blast and resulting deaths have done nothing to alter the course of the war – Israeli shelling of Gaza continued Wednesday morning. The course of US-led diplomacy, however, has been dramatically impacted. US President Biden arrived in Tel Aviv Wednesday, the first stop in a planned two-country shuttle diplomacy tour.
Biden had already signaled support for Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu verbally—”We have Israel’s back,” he had said using American slang. Last week, he dispatched two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean in a warning to Iran not to intervene. Iran supports Hamas and also Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that fought off an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 2006.
The next stop on Biden’s schedule, Jordan, was canceled by King Abdullah II after the other two participants, the presidents of Egypt and the Palestinian National Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, declined to attend after the hospital bombing.
No one could recall a time when a scheduled US presidential visit to an allied country had been called off at the host’s request.
Jordan has immediate concerns about its own social stability. Anti-Israel and anti-US protests, which sometimes turned violent, have erupted in Jordan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. In the West Bank, protestors in the city of Ramallah exchanged gunfire with Palestinian police. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is currently trading artillery fire with Israeli forces along their joint border.
The Hamas-Israel conflict began on October 7 with a vicious day-long attack by Hamas gunmen on Israeli civilian communities near the Gaza Strip border. Hamas raiders killed about 1,400 men, women and children, wounded scores of others and terrorized more. Some 300 were forced into Gaza as hostages.
Israel’s retaliation has featured daily volleys of hundreds of missile and artillery shells targeting the densely populated Gaza Strip. Palestinian deaths have reached about 3,000, not including the victims at the hospital, according to reports. Tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers were also mobilized and sent to the border with Gaza.
By visiting Israel and Jordan, Biden was in effect trying to rebuild a kind of Pax Americana in the Middle East that once seemed to exist more than 30 years ago in the wake in the wake of the 1990 Persian Gulf war.
The United States not only expelled invading Iraqi forces from Kuwait, but afterwards set up pan-Middle East peace talks based on Palestinian recognition of Israel in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Peace efforts eventually disintegrated. Diplomacy failed, periodic warfare broke out, Israeli settlements in the West Bank expanded, Palestinian divisions hardened and Hamas persistently rose in military power. This war has been one of the most deadly involving Israel and the Palestinians since the 1947 founding of the Israeli state.
As has often happened in recent Middle East wars, a public relations contest has accompanied the carnage. Hamas, reeling from accusations of war crimes for its brutal assault on civilians, has attempted to turn the tables on Israel: Not only does it bomb civilians, it also attacks hospitals.
Ossama Hamdan, a Hamas representative in Lebanon, accused Biden of giving a “green light” for Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
On Wednesday, Israel presented its evidence that the rocket was an errant Islamic Jihad projectile that hit the hospital grounds. The Israelis seemed keen to impress the United States over Israelis with its account: its version of the hospital strike was first broadcast on television in English.
In a joint press appearance with Biden, Netanyahu paired Hamas with ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the inveterate enemy of the US. American airpower helped to crush ISIS in 2014—in informal partnership with Iran—to protect the beleaguered Iraqi government against Sunni Muslim insurgents.
“Just as the civilized world united to defeat ISIS, it must unite to defeat Hamas,” Netanyahu advised Biden.
Biden said he agreed the rocket strike was the “other team’s” fault and repeated his support for Israel. Then he added, “We have to also bear in mind that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.”
Whether the vivid news of mass casualties, whatever the cause, will soften Israel’s military response seems unlikely. The testimony of relatives of hostages and videos of their abduction has enflamed public opinion. Israel has told civilians to leave northern Gaza to avoid relentless bombing and has blocked food and water deliveries to the Gaza Strip.
Such actions are war crimes, according to United Nations officials and human rights groups, but there is little Israeli public objection.
In any case, the dramatic eruption of controversy was unexpected in Washington. Biden had been widely praised for visiting Ukraine during its defensive war against Russia. Now running for reelection in 2024, Biden might have expected praise for visiting and backing Israel while preaching military moderation and aiming to win the backing of Arab allies.
Instead, he bumped into a hornet’s nest, coming home with part of his goal—showing solidarity with Israel—while leaving behind not only rattled allies but a Middle East in even more turmoil than he found it.