Western Leaders' 'Posturing' Shuttle Visits to Israel an Effort to Buoy 'Hold on Power at Home'
As they embark upon a flurry of visits to Tel Aviv amid the latest flare-up of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, European leaders are “demonstrating once again that their only concern is to strengthen their hold on power at home by photo ops in Israel,” and “posturing” alongside the Israel apartheid regime leader Bibi 'The Baby Butcher', Gilbert Doctorow, an international relations and Russian affairs analyst, told Sputnik.
“These
visits are meaningful for demonstrating publicly that the leaders are
backing fully one side to the conflict and so disqualify themselves as
peacemakers. They also attract the attention of the Global South,
heightening their contempt for Europe,” Doctorow underscored.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, US President Joe Biden, and now UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have all made successive visits to Tel Aviv amid the latest violent escalation
of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. At the same time, ongoing
hostilities in the Gaza Strip region show no signs of abating, with the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pounding what they claim are Hamas targets
inside the Palestinian enclave.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrives at Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv,
Israel
On October 7, the Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise large-scale attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip. After it breached the border, killing and seizing people in neighboring Israeli communities, Tel Aviv launched retaliatory strikes and ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to more than two million people, cutting off supplies of food, water, and fuel. Thousands of dead and injured have been reported on both sides as a result of the escalation.
The Gaza death toll has already exceeded 3,300,
according to Palestinian authorities. One million people have been
displaced in the span of 10 days, according to the United Nations.
Furthermore, since the start of the complete blockage of the Gaza Strip
by Israel, the Palestinian Ministry of Health warned of a severe
shortage of medicines, water, and growing risk of an outbreak of disease
in the besieged enclave. On Tuesday, even European Council President
Charles Michel admitted that the siege of the Gaza Strip by Israel violates international humanitarian law.
"When
you cut the basic infrastructure, when you cut access to water, when
you cut electricity, if you do not allow food to be delivered, this is
not in line with the international law," Michel told reporters in
Brussels after an extraordinary video conference of the European Council
on the situation in the Middle East.
Furthermore, over 500 perished in a blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital
in northern Gaza on Tuesday night, where locals were sheltering from
Israeli airstrikes. The Israeli and Palestinian authorities have blamed
each other for the fatal incident. Hamas said that a missile was
launched by the IDF, while Israeli officials put the blame on the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement - something the latter denied in a
statement. US President Joe Biden, during a meeting with Benjamin
Netanyahu on Wednesday, laid the responsibility for the Gaza hospital
blast on the "other team," and not on Israel.
‘Gesture Politics’
As for European leaders, they "have
nothing to offer to the parties to the conflict except some small
donations that are meaningless in the face of the total devastation that
Israel is now dealing out to Gaza," Gilbert Doctorow emphasized.
“I'm
not sure whether Europe or European leaders can do anything. It is just
gesture politics when it comes to their visits to Israel and having
discussions and talks with Benjamin Netanyahu. So by doing this and
traveling to Israel and meeting with the Israeli politicians, they
reaffirm and show their support and they pledge allegiance to Israel and
to the Israeli course," Adriel Kasonta, a
London-based foreign affairs analyst and former chairman of the
International Affairs Committee at the Bow Group think tank, told Sputnik.
This flurry of shuttle diplomacy cannot but call to mind the eagerness with which all these Western leaders have been making forays to Kiev.
As they made a bee-line for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the
aforementioned politicians have offered him successive vast weapons
packages that have failed to impact the stuttering counteroffensive,
while only further fanning the flames of the ongoing NATO proxy war against Russia. The same Western leaders have made no bones about being ready to prop up Kiev “to the last Ukrainian.”
So the optics of another round of such so-called “peacemaking” shuttling, with vows to "absolutely"
support Israel's right to defend itself, while the death toll
accumulates in the enclave, feed into speculation that, similar to
Ukraine, the back-and-forth visits will fail to defuse tensions.
Weighing
in on speculation whether there are tools to influence Israel with
regard to its mulled ground operation in Gaza, Doctorow said:
“On one side of the equation, the USA has such tools if it ever wished to use them, which so far it seems they do not. By offering $10 billion in aid to Israel, Washington just has to add conditions. If it were at all serious in defending Israel, the first condition would be the immediate replacement of the entire Netanyahu Cabinet and its replacement from among the opposition parties. Netanyahu and company are personally responsible for negligence arising from hubris that enabled the Hamas attack on October 7. Netanyahu personally is responsible for having aided and abetted the Hamas control of Gaza as a counterbalance to the Palestinian Authority of [President Mahmoud] Abbas.”
Adriel Kasonta voiced the opinion that the only country that “holds cards as far as the Israel and Palestine conflict is concerned is the United States.” Underscoring that Washington was the greatest supporter of the Israeli state, “especially when the sale of armaments is concerned and also providing money for Israel,” Kasonta, however, pointed to the recent move by the US to oppose the United Nations motion to establish a humanitarian corridor to Gaza.
“So
I think that the United States have already made their decision to
allow Israel to do whatever they want with regards to the Palestinian
people and Gaza itself,” said the foreign affairs analyst.
Adriel Kasonta speculated that Russia and China were emerging as two countries that “oppose what is happening with the Palestinian people and what is happening in Gaza.” He voiced the opinion that these two countries could “support the outcome of this conflict by using their powers, their soft power.”
“I
think that these two… great powers, as I said, China and Russia, can
influence and should influence global opinion and somehow influence
Israel itself. We know that many expats from Russia are living in
Israel. We know that Israel is very much interested in having good
economic relations with China. So I think that these two countries have
certain leverages to use and to influence Israel to spare the lives of
the Palestinian people. As we can see at the moment, this doesn't look
very well. And I'm not sure whether the two-state solution is still on
the table. It certainly doesn't look this way at the moment,” Kasonta underscored.
According to the ex-chairman of the International Affairs Committee at the Bow Group think tank, there is currently little “will
on the side of the Israeli government to spare lives of the Palestinian
people, because they are using its bogus arguments of trying to raze
Gaza to the ground in order to destroy Hamas.” Adriel Kasonta
deplored the huge humanitarian crisis which is already unfolding, and
warned that the actions of Israel would “destroy the two-state solution project completely.”
“Certainly,
if the United State would not greenlight the actions of the Israeli
government, Israel would not conduct this annihilation of the
Palestinian population,” Kasonta believed.
The
US has readily used the escalation of hostilities to assemble a show of
force in the region, sending to the eastern Mediterranean near Israel
two US Navy carrier strike groups led by the USS Gerald Ford and the USS
Dwight D Eisenhower. Furthermore, another navy ship
- US 6th Fleet Blue Ridge-class command and control ship the USS Mount
Whitney LCC 20 - was deployed from its homeport in the central Italian
coastal city of Gaeta to support US operations in the aforementioned
area. President Biden’s moves do nothing for de-escalation, Gilbert Doctorow argued, saying:
“Biden
wrongfully believes that the presence of the US aircraft carrier task
forces off of Israeli shores ensures de-escalation, because it deters
Iran and Syria from entering the conflict in a second front against
Israel. On the contrary, the US naval presence heightens regional
tensions and sets the stage for a regional, if not global war."
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