Has Gaza carnage shrunk Israel's role as reliable Western proxy?

Washington, DC — While the Western support for Israel continues, Tel Aviv has proven to be an ineffective ally and a political burden to its Western allies amid its "genocide" of Palestinians in besieged Gaza, according to experts.

In a panel discussion organised by The Jerusalem Fund in US capital, Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani highlighted Israel's historical reliability, citing its involvement in conflicts such as the 1956 tri-aggression along with UK and France against Egypt, and the 1967 Six Day War against Egypt and Syria.

However, Rabbani noted a decline in Israel's effectiveness since the 1980s, culminating in its current violence in Gaza and struggles against resistance groups like Hamas.

"In recent decades, Israel has proven increasingly incapable of reaching a decisive and definitive outcome in its conflicts with those it occupies, and its neighbours," Mouin argued.

"Even if it [Israel's carnage in Gaza] ends tomorrow morning, with Israel decisively achieving all objectives in the next 24 hours — let's assume that for the sake of argument, Israel would still have a lot to answer for, because certain things have happened since October 7, that I think, raise serious questions about Israel's continued reliability as an effective proxy for Western Imperial strategy in the Middle East," he added.

"You have a period of five months where Israel has proven incapable of achieving any of its key military objectives vis-a-vis, either Hamas or the other Palestinian movements in the Gaza Strip."

Rabbani added that while Israel succeeded in achieving some of its goals by making Gaza unfit for human life and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, that isn't of particular interest to its Western allies, saying the Western sponsors want to see an army that is "not only an effective killing machine, but an effective fighting force" that can deal a decisive defeat to any group, which is something Israel has failed to pull off against Hamas, Hezbollah or other resistance groups.

"Even if it were to achieve that tomorrow morning, I would argue it's already too late," he said, adding that the US initially didn’t want Israel to launch another front with Lebanon simply because it's incapable of doing so.

"So rather than Israel being the outpost of Western interests in this region, the US had to come in, not to defend the US interest but to defend Israel," he said.

Will Israel be forced to change its stance?

Another panelist, British-American writer and researcher Helena Cobban, recalled three major events through 2023 up until Hamas' surprise blitz that showed that the US could lose its dominance over the world politics and its political isolation.

The first of which was thaw between Saudi Arabia and Iran brokered by China, which, according to Cobban, took the West by surprise.

The second was Ukraine's long-awaited counter-offensive against Russia, which failed.

The third was the BRICS summit, which proved that the US sanctions against Russia were ineffective.

And the last was the Hamas blitz, which showed that the Palestinian resistance group is more capable than initially thought and also showed how resilient the Palestinians in besieged Gaza are.

Cobban also slammed the US for trying to prevent the International Court of Justice from interfering because of "negotiations" between Israel and Palestine.

Asked whether the US could change its foreign policy given the unreliability of Israel and Washington's increased isolation, Lebanese-American scholar Dr Edmund Ghareeb said that it's hard for President Joe Biden to take a decision.

"He's not yet willing to say 'stop the war'. He can do that because Israel relies on the US financially and for political protection. Biden may regret this down the road because his poll numbers are down," Ghareeb told TRT World.

"At the same time, he [Biden] knows he needs the support of some of the friends of Israel and the United States who have financial support for his campaign… I have to wait and see his words translated to actions before saying he's likely to change his views."