Biden’s approach to Gaza has irrevocably tarnished US credibility

Just two weeks after taking office, United States President Joe Biden declared in his remarks to the State Department, “the message I want the world to hear today: America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back at the centre of our foreign policy.”

Biden’s assertion was intended to show a distinct change from former President Donald Trump’s administration, which Biden had spent years harshly criticising before his own election in 2020.

In contrast to Trump’s “America First” attitude towards foreign policy, Biden’s “America is back” statement was a nod to decades of US administrations that had championed and led the so-called international rules-based order established in the wake of the second World War.

But promises aside, Biden has in many ways actually preserved the foreign policies of his predecessor. The Biden administration essentially maintained Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy on Iran and has failed to restore the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Additionally, US reliance on sanctions as a tool of coercion continues to grow, bloated military budgets keep increasing, and Biden has focused on expanding the Abraham Accords–which are bilateral agreements for Arab-Israeli normalisation mediated by the Trump administration - while ignoring the cause of the Palestinian people.

There is a long list of critiques that can be aimed at Biden’s foreign policy, but his approach to the ongoing crisis in Gaza - following the October 7 Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis - has been particularly egregious.

Israeli government's reaction to Hamas' blitz on October 7 and its relentless bombardment of all of Gaza, which has killed at least 17,700 Palestinians, including thousands of children, amounts to collective punishment, which is a clear violation of international law.

The creation of these globally accepted rules was meant to prevent and hold accountable all actors who violate its precepts. Whether it be Hamas or Israel, no one should be above the law.

Yet, throughout this crisis in Gaza, the Biden administration has openly placed Israel outside the scope of responsibility. While double standards in US foreign policy are nothing new, the brazen way in which this contradictory approach has been showcased by the United States during two different conflicts - one in Ukraine and the other in Gaza - has sparked a global outcry.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the US and its allies took immediate action, sending weapons and support to Ukraine and swiftly making Russia the most-sanctioned country in the world.

Within the first month of the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration formally declared Russia had committed war crimes. Within the first year, the US had welcomed 271,000 Ukrainian refugees.

The contrast with how the Biden administration has dealt with Israel and Palestinians in Gaza could not be starker. As the international community rallies to bring an end to Israel’s heavy bombing campaign, condemn all violence against civilians, and secure a ceasefire, the US has vetoed every attempt to do so.

This includes most recently after the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter which has not been used in decades.

As human rights groups and global NGOs call out Israel’s actions as possible war crimes, American officials say that they cannot make such assessments and are not carrying them out at this time. While Israeli Holocaust scholars are using the term “genocide” to describe what is happening in Gaza, the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to supply more weapons to Israel and asking for an additional $14 billion in aid for Israel.

Though US officials have scoffed at the comparison between Israeli and Russian actions against civilians, the idea merits an examination. The narrative that claims the current conflict in Gaza began on October 7 is terribly misleading and ignores a decades-long military occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, which is illegal under international law.

It ignores the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, the 16-year Israeli blockade of Gaza, the crimes of apartheid carried out by Israel, and the extensive list of humiliation and oppression millions of Palestinians face every day.

What is the point of intentional law if it is only applied selectively? This is the question on the tongues of many critics of the Biden administration’s policies. The most outrageous part of Biden’s approach in Gaza is how blatantly it contradicts the rhetoric his administration has employed throughout his presidency.

Led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US foreign policy was supposed to be centred around diplomacy and the international “rules-based order,” which this administration has gone to great lengths to boast about and promote as one of its core principles. After all, that was the profound meaning of the simple declaration: “America is back.”

The reality has been a harsh reminder that the America of Donald Trump was not an aberration. The Biden administration’s absolute refusal to heed the calls of the international community, human rights advocates, and global NGOs—all while maintaining “unconditional aid” to Israel—has given the Israeli government carte blanche to do anything it wants, including the mass killing of thousands of civilians and the displacement of nearly two million Palestinians.

As such, Biden has done more in the last 10 weeks to damage the idea of an international rules-based order than his predecessor ever did. If the US is showing through its actions that Israel does not have to follow any rules, then why would any other country feel obliged to adhere to them?

As stated by the UN’s Guterres, “the brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” There is no justification for the indiscriminate mass slaughter and destruction of civilian life that we have witnessed in Gaza in recent months, where children, civilians, UN aid workers and journalists are being killed at a historic pace.

United Nations officials have repeatedly stated that nowhere is safe in Gaza, Doctors Without Borders has pleaded for a ceasefire while Gaza’s medical system collapses, as thousands of Palestinians face starvation.

If this is not the collective punishment of an entire people, then what is? By directly funding and supporting these crimes—as the world watches in despair and demands a ceasefire—the Biden administration has cast off the veneer of US credibility and the efficacy of a rules-based order.