The Decibel - The influence of the U.S. on the Israel-Hamas war

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the U.S. was among the first nations to firmly side with Israel, pledging unequivocal support. The U.S. has historically been a staunch supporter of Israel, but this particular conflict has a different dimension due to the fact that some Americans and Canadians are among the hostages Hamas kidnapped.Adrian Morrow is The Globe’s Washington correspondent and he explains the geopolitical strategy of the Biden administration in response to the ongoing war, as the possibility of a military ground offensive into the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army grows.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

It's been almost a week since war broke out between Israel and Hamas. There have been airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, shelling and missiles from both sides, and Israeli troops amassing close to the border. We're also getting a clearer picture of what happened in the original Hamas attacks last Saturday, as people share their stories. It all started a Saturday morning. Around 9 o'clock in the morning, we lost connection with my family that lives down south in Kibbutz Niroz

this is the situation six members of my family right now are being held in Gaza time is rushing there's a nine month baby and a three year old child and my aunt has Parkinson's disease I want them back we all want our family back and a three-year-old child and my aunt has Parkinson's disease.

I want them back. We all want our family back. I want to go back to Friday. You know, I want to close my eyes and this was all a nightmare. Meanwhile, in Gaza, where electricity, food and water have been cut off, reporters describe scenes of desperation as injured civilians arrive at a hospital. I see a girl with her teddy bear. More injuries are coming. And as you see, there are no ambulances, only Palestinian civilians helping other civilians.

This conflict and these stories have captured the attention of the world, especially that of the United States. U.S. President Joe Biden was quick to declare his country's full support of Israel. So in this moment, we must be crystal clear. We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack. And beneath that U.S. declaration are complex geopolitical factors.

What the superpower does and how they show their support will have major implications for the region. Adrian Morrow is The Globe's Washington correspondent. He'll help us understand the role of the United States in the geopolitics of this war. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Adrian, thank you so much for talking to me today. Thanks for having me, Mainika. Let's just get started by looking at the U.S. response to the attacks in Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel on Thursday. He reinforced the U.S.'s support for the country. And President Biden, of course, has also been very vocal in his support for Israel. The U.S. is obviously a big global superpower, right? But why is U.S. support so important here? So the U.S.'s support to Israel is important for a couple of reasons. One is the purely pragmatic aspect from Israel's point of view, which is that the U.S. provides a lot of military aid to Israel. So this is something that they already do on an ongoing basis, where I think it's about $3 billion a year that is given by the U.S. to Israel to help it maintain its military. And then on top of that,

in moments like this, in moments when Israel is in the middle of a fight, the U.S. often has stepped up to provide additional aid. Biden did it, you know, back in 2021 when Israel was firing rockets at Gaza after rocket attacks by Hamas at that point that the U.S. helped Israel replenish its Iron Dome defense system. The other thing that the U.S. helped Israel replenish its Iron Dome defense system. The other thing that the U.S. provides to Israel is a lot of moral support. So voting with it, for instance, at the United Nations, you know, essentially affirming that the U.S. is on Israel's side here, that they agree with Israel's right to fight back against Hamas. You know, and we saw a little bit of the reaction to Biden's speech the other day in

Israel, where a lot of people were thanking him for the sort of full-throated support that he gave to Israel in his speech. Okay, so there's a moral support aspect to it, but also just that very tangible money for aid to Israel. So you said $3 billion in military aid. Of course, that's not insignificant, right? So that's what Israel gets from the U.S. What about the other way around, though, Adrian? Why is Israel such an important ally for the U.S.? A couple of reasons. I mean, one is certainly historic, is the sense that after the Second World War, the U.S. has always supported Israel as a protective sort of homeland for Jewish people. And it's kind of the insurance that something like the Holocaust is not going to happen again.

For 75 years, Israel has stood as the only guarantor of the security of Jewish people around the world. So the atrocities of the past could never happen again. And Biden kind of alluded to this in his speech the other day, where he talked about, you know, meeting with Golda Meir when he was a young senator. That was the previous Prime Minister of Israel. Yeah, that's right. Speaking with Golda Meir, who was the Prime Minister of Israel in the 70s during the Yom Kippur War. She leaned over and whispered to me, she said, don't worry, Senator Biden. We have a secret weapon here in Israel. We have no place else to go. And Biden kind of, you know, reinforced that idea that this

is, you know, a homeland for the Jewish people is a way of ensuring that there's a refuge so that, you know, Jewish people have a safe place to go where they're not going to face the kind of, you know, pogroms and anti-Semitism that, you know, that they faced for thousands of years. We'll make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have. Part of it is also, you know, Israel's the most consistently democratic country in the Middle East, you know,

the country in the Middle East that most, you know, champions kind of Western values or Western ideas of liberal democracy. And so that the U.S. sort of sees Israel as a key ally in that region of the world. And having that the U.S. sort of sees Israel as a key ally in that region of the world. And having that kind of relationship with Israel gives the U.S. kind of an entry point into the Middle East. Yeah. And of course, that has been complicated a bit by Netanyahu's controversial attempts to recently overhaul the judiciary in Israel. So we know that U.S.

President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the day of the attack, they had a call. And they've also spoken a lot since. So what did the US do in the immediate days, Adrian, after this war is broken out? You said basically that he told Netanyahu, whatever Israel needs, we will give to you. And then and then he kind of made that more tangible, I think about a day later by by announcing sort of the first transfer military aid, basically just using his presidential power to appropriate some of the things that Israel is going to want in terms of ammunition and replenishing their missile defense system. And then he's also said that he's going to go to Congress at some point. Unclear exactly what he's going to ask for from Congress, but he's made it clear that he wants Congress to come together and pass some sort of additional aid package.

Okay, so that's military aid. Have they done anything but their actual military, though? Yes, that's the other thing that he's done is he sent an aircraft carrier and a bunch of other warships. Apparently, they're looking at sending another aircraft carrier, as well as reinforcing some of their warplanes and military bases in the region. He's basically framed this as deterrence, the notion that one of the imperatives for Biden is not to have Hezbollah or Iran get involved in the war and have the war grow larger.

And what's Biden been doing, I guess, on the diplomatic front? So this, we've been talking about his relationship with Israel, but he's also been talking to other leaders as well, right? Yeah, he rallied a number of European leaders, France, Italy, Germany, and the UK, to also basically put out a joint statement standing with Israel. And so it's sort of part of, I think, how Biden, you know, sees his role as president of the United States is not just to support American allies, but to try to organize other allies to support his allies. It's what he's done, you know, most on the largest scale of Ukraine in kind of leading the Western response to Russia's invasion. Let me also ask you about the domestic response within the U.S. then, Adrian. What has been the response to Biden's support of Israel?

Biden has had near universal support for his support of Israel. There's generally a political consensus among most Americans to support Israel. Both Democrats and Republicans tend to be pretty supportive of the government of Israel. Even people who tend not to agree with Joe Biden on most other issues, such as the religious right, tend to be supporters of Israel. You know, on the left of the Democratic Party, there tend to be some people who are more sympathetic to the Palestinians. And we've seen a couple of statements, either from Rashida Tlaib, which explicitly referred to Israel as an apartheid state. You know, we've seen other comments from Bernie Sanders, which I don't believe quite went that far, but which basically talked about both the horror of the terror attack on Israel by Hamas,

as well as the humanitarian situation in Gaza and how badly, you know, things have been for people living in Gaza. There's been a little bit more equivocation on the left of the Democratic Party over this kind of full-throated support of Israel. But for the most part, I mean, you've really had basically full support so far within the U.S. for what Biden is saying and doing. Yeah. And when we're talking about, you know, the U.S. giving more than $3 billion in aid. So there is a broad kind of support there for that kind of money. I also wonder about the other side of that, though, Adrian. Does the U.S. aid that's slotted to go to the Palestinians. And it's kind of a variety of different things. A lot of it is supporting basic humanitarian things, so food aid, water supplies and things like that. Some of it is more towards civil society. So trying to fund nonprofits, trying to fund business development for people trying to set up businesses in Palestinian territories.

And so far, I checked with both the State Department and USAID, and they both say that there are no plans to cut that aid off. They're not considering, you know, freezing that aid or anything like that. They basically say that their aid goes through, you know, they say trusted partners, goes in some cases through the Israeli government to the Palestinians. And so they don't seem to be concerned that it's going to be, you know, misappropriated by Hamas or by other terror groups. Which is in stark contrast to some European countries, right, that have either suspended or actually reconsidered their own aid to Gaza and the West Bank. Yeah, that's right.

There was a whole flap at the European Union a couple of days ago where, so Austria has suspended its aid. Germany is considering suspending its aid. At the European Union, there was some discussion of reconsidering the aid. And then other officials at the European Union came out and said, no, we're not actually going to do that. So there's a bit of a sort of

back and forth at the EU over that question. But so far on the US side, they seem to be confident that their aid is actually being used for humanitarian purposes. And so far, the indication is it's going to continue.

We'll be right back. Okay, so Adrian, let's get into the wider geopolitical context now. So the reality is there's a lot of different interests here. So what would you say are the big factors that President Biden is weighing at this particular moment? So I'd say there's four. I mean, one is his support and the U.S.'s support of Israel and that alliance, you know, along with sort of Biden's desire to be engaged in the world and to kind of be at the forefront when there are sort of big issues that he feels are at stake geopolitically. Number two is the desire not to see this conflict broaden throughout the region and particularly not for Iran not to get involved. The third is the US hostages who are among the people who were kidnapped by Hamas and are being held hostage in Gaza at the moment. And the fourth is the

humanitarian situation in Gaza, I'd say is the other sort of, you know, big consideration that that's probably going to weigh at some point on the US response. Okay, so we're going to talk about all four of those then. I want to actually start with the hostages, though, because this is really forefront in a lot of people's minds, right? So do we know how many Americans are being held hostage in Gaza? Not exactly. I mean, the numbers from the U.S. government have fluctuated for obvious reasons as they confirm whether or not, you know, people are accounted for. But they say it's about 20 Americans who are unaccounted for in Israel at the moment. For Biden, of course, and he said that there's no higher priority for him than the safety of Americans who've been taken hostage. And so that's going to be a big factor for him is figuring out how to resolve

this. We know that they've dispatched experts, including special forces to Israel, American special forces, to try to figure out how they're going to get the hostages back. It's unclear whether this takes the form of negotiations, whether it's a matter of Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Hamas releasing Israeli and American prisoners, or whether they're actually looking at some sort of U.S. military intervention, whether it's whether it's a commando operation or something like that to try to rescue the hostages. But the stakes are quite high. I mean, for, you know, Biden is probably thinking at least a little bit about Jimmy Carter in 1979, when there were American hostages held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran for over a year. And Carter did launch a military operation to try to get them out that failed and resulted in American soldiers dying. You know, that's sort of in some ways the kind of most immediate interest for Americans is the fact that they want to protect their citizens and have to

figure out, you know, how they're going to do that. And by the way, I mean, Hamas has threatened to start executing hostages. And I think that's, that's something that's got to be weighing very heavily on Biden is what happens when Hamas executes hostages. And if they start releasing, you know, video or publicizing that this is what they're doing, you know, what that looks like. Yeah, for sure. And we talked about, you know, 20 potential American hostages, the numbers are a little bit difficult, because we don't really have final numbers. But there's, it sounds like there's over 100 hostages being held right now. So there's a lot of people that have to be taken into consideration here. Okay, I want to ask you about the other point you were raising about support for Israel and American influence as

well, geopolitically. So what about Biden's foreign policy ambitions, and I guess how they play into this war between Israel and Hamas? Biden is somebody who deeply believes in the U.S.'s alliances, and he firmly believes that the U.S. has to have the back of allies, and particularly allies that it sees as advancing its values around the world. And Biden clearly sees Israel in that light. It explains why when the invasion of Ukraine happened, Biden has been, you know, sort of from the start, fully behind Ukraine and has repeatedly sent tons of military hardware, military aid to Ukraine. And so I think that's motivating his decision here to sort of do for Israel what he's done for Ukraine in supporting them militarily and giving them aid, as well as trying to rally

other countries to back them. Yeah. And another thing we've been talking about, though, when we're talking about the foreign policy side of this is the fact that the U.S. has been working with Saudi Arabia to try to get a deal done. And that would also impact relations with Israel. Can you tell us, Adrian, what was that deal and where does it stand now after this situation? Yeah, I mean, that deal at this point seems to have been put on ice, if not to have been abandoned. But Biden, before all this happened, was working on a deal where Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel, would recognize Israel's existence, you know, start up normal diplomatic relations. And in exchange, the U.S. would potentially give security guarantees to Saudi, would potentially help them with a civilian nuclear program.

And then Israel would make some sort of concessions to the Palestinians. It was always going to be a complicated deal to pull off, not least of all because of that last part, because Netanyahu runs a government that does not want to make any concessions to the Palestinians. And it was a bit of a follow on to Donald Trump's policy in the Middle East where he had brokered a deal or his son-in-law had brokered a normalization deal between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The Abraham Accords, I believe. Yeah, the Abraham Accords, that's right, between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The Abraham Accords, I believe. Yeah, the Abraham Accords, that's right, between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. And so Biden sort of wanted to do a similar deal with Saudi Arabia. You know, Saudi Arabia, of course, is a huge regional rival to Iran. And so that was partly what Saudi was going to get out of this was potentially a security guarantee from the US that might be helpful to Saudi in its sort of competition with

Iran. Yeah. Okay. You also mentioned escalation, Adrian. So without getting too alarmist or hypothetical, what are the concerns, though, about how this could spiral into a wider conflict? You know, Iran has certainly supported Hamas and also supports Hezbollah in Lebanon. And so the U.S.'s concern is that Iran or Hezbollah joins the conflict and that this becomes a wider regional war between Israel and Iran or even between Israel and Hezbollah. And the U.S. wants to prevent anything like that from happening. There were also questions kind of early on about, you know, Iran's potential involvement in working with Hamas. What has the US said about that?

So the US has essentially said that it has not definitively ruled out Iran being directly involved in planning or ordering the attacks. But they said that there's no evidence that that actually happened. I think that language is also aimed at turning the temperature down and essentially trying to prevent the conflict from spreading. Iran has actually had similar messaging where Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has repeatedly denied that his government was involved in planning or coordinating or ordering the attacks, which, you know, I'm sure that hearing that kind of those kind of words from Khamenei, whether you believe them or not, is something that Biden probably wants to hear because he probably wants to see that kind of diplomatic signal that Iran is not trying to get involved.

Okay. And the last factor that you mentioned, Adrian, was the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. So walk us through this. What are we seeing there? So Gaza has had a blockade for the last 16 years from Israel in terms of it's difficult for people or supplies to get in and out. And so they've had a lot of humanitarian problems on everything from water to food in recent years. Since Hamas's terror attacks, Israel has announced that it's tightening the blockade, cutting off electricity, cutting off water, cutting off food supplies into Gaza. That's a very scary situation for a lot of people, right? When you're cutting off water and food, I mean, those are essentials.

Yeah, absolutely. It's about 2.5 million people who live in a territory that's about the same size as the island of Montreal. Gaza health authorities have said about 900 people have been killed in the airstrikes, you know, more than 200 of those children. And we've heard, you know, reports of aid workers, you know, getting killed, getting killed in the crossfire as well. And this humanitarian, you know humanitarian crisis that already exists in Gaza is presumably going to get worse if there's an invasion. There's been some talk on the U.S. side of trying to set up humanitarian corridors through Egypt for people to leave Gaza. But it's unclear at this point whether that would just be foreign nationals and American citizens who are in Gaza who then would have an opportunity to leave, you know, before an Israeli invasion, or whether they would actually give the opportunity

to all the residents of Gaza, you know, to leave, you know, and we've seen a couple of mentions from Biden of the need to respect the rules of war, and that sort of an indication that he believes that Israel is going to do that. But aside from that, we haven't really seen a lot of talk from Biden kind of specifically about the situation that Palestinian civilians find themselves in in Gaza and to what extent he will or will not sort of try to figure out a solution or something to kind of mitigate the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Just lastly here, Adrian, I mean, this is quite daunting geopolitical math that the U.S. has to do here, right?

All these calculations that they're trying to balance. How likely is it that the U.S. will get this stuff right? Biden tends to be a fairly cautious president. You know, after the kind of disaster that happened in Afghanistan where, you know, the U.S. arguably didn't back a U.S. ally at the time, you know, the Afghan's government at the time, and were subjected to these horrific scenes of people trying to flee from Kabul Airport. I think Biden would want to avoid something like that, you know, from happening again, from being seen as not supporting a U.S. ally. And so I can't see Biden's sort of support for Israel, for Israel wavering.

Adrian, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you, Menaka. That's it for today. I'm Menaka Raman-Welms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel'll talk to you next week.