While the US flounders in a conflict it did not foresee, emerging powers see a chance for new voices to join the top tableshowing smoke billowing from the explosion of a US-supplied bomb, and discernible in the background was the outline of eight black parachutes dropping US aid in precisely the same neighbourhood.
Among emerging powers, the lesson of Gaza has been that it is time for new voices to join the top table. “This war is hideous but speaks to a bigger problem: the lack of reform of global governance institutions, including and primarily the UN security council,” said Filipe Nasser, a senior adviser at the Brazilian foreign ministry. “This is the point of convergence across the global south. They feel the international order is profoundly asymmetric and detrimental to their interests.
The longer the conflict has continued – and few foresaw six months of it – the more US diplomacy has struggled to withstand the conflicting pressures. Netanyahu, wanting to win more time to “finish the job”, has shown himself unwilling to listen to Joe Biden, while the Gulf Cooperation Council, regardless of its private views of Hamas, has demanded that the US makes a decisive break with Israel and recognises Palestine as a state.
But Biden is confident in his foreign policy expertise and his initial advice to Israel – not to make the same mistakes that the US did in its own “war on terror” – appeared subtle, well pitched and true to himself. A decades-long Zionist and supporter of Israel in Washington, he advised: “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it.” The policy was to hug Netanyahu and the hostage families close.
Briefings about Biden’s growing impatience with Netanyahu, and the candid private conversations the two men held, started appearing in the US press as early as November. The more the stories appeared and the less any real-world consequence was imposed on Israel, the more Biden appeared weak or deceitful – neither a good look in an election year.
Increasingly, Netanyahu personally attracted the blame. William Hague, the former British foreign secretary, was one of the first in the political establishment on this side of the Atlantic to openly express such an opinion, reflecting a strong private Foreign Office view that Hamas could not be defeated militarily.
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