The US response to the unprecedented Hamas offensive has been swift and unsurprising.
Top officials, from President Biden to the secretaries of state and defense, have unequivocally condemned it, and declared their unwavering commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself.
The Pentagon added that it will work to ensure Israel has what it needs to do so.
The Biden administration has had a strained relationship with Israel’s right-wing government. It has warned about threats to Israeli democracy because of a plan to overhaul the judiciary – and criticised a particularly aggressive settler policy in the West Bank.
Tensions had begun to ease in the past month, and now US support for Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks will become the focus.
Former President Donald Trump also backed Israel’s right to defend itself with overwhelming force. And he took the opportunity to blame the Biden administration for policies he said undermined his own efforts to bring “so much peace to the Middle East” by brokering normalisation agreements between Israel and Arab countries.
In fact, the Biden administration has been negotiating a similar agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Any deal would have required some concessions to the Palestinians.
The future of that initiative now depends on how the new Hamas-Israel conflict plays out.
BBC