The president of U.S , Joe Biden returned home after seven hours in the Israeli war zone, with a Middle East increasingly tense and in a worse situation than when he arrived.
Biden told reporters on Air Force One that he was pleased to have gotten the job done — notably on the issue of unblocking humanitarian aid in a Gaza Strip fenced-in area, which has been under heavy Israeli bombardment since the horrific terrorist attacks in Hamas on October 7th.
But the mission also showed the limits of U.S. influence in a region on the brink of broader violence, while conflicting narratives between Israel and Arab states about a explosion in a hospital in the Gaza Strip which is believed to have killed hundreds of people, deepened the crisis.
The president fulfilled a fundamental objective of the mission – expressing deep respect for Israel, embracing the country’s trauma and pain and making analogies to the Holocaust, while promising to always stand by the Jewish people.
But he also called on Israeli leaders not to allow anger over the murders of “their parents, their grandparents, their sons, their daughters, their children and even their babies” to taint their clarity about their goals in trying to destroy Hamas.
The president drew a firm difference between the Palestinian people and their radical Hamas rulers, whom he accused of using civilians as human shields for weapons and tunnels, and lamented the “innocent” lives lost in Gaza after days of Israeli bombing.
But as protests against the hospital explosion spread across the region, the terrifying possibility of war Israel with Hamas intensifying beyond its borders became even greater when Biden climbed into Air Force One to return to the country on Wednesday (18).
The president admitted to journalists that the emergency mission had been a risk, but insisted that it was a success.
Still, given the enormous political investment of American prestige and influence involved in a sudden presidential trip, it’s fair to say that the question remains as to what exactly Biden’s trip delivered.
VIDEO – Clashes in the West Bank leave three Palestinians dead
Hospital explosion overshadowed Biden’s trip from the beginning
The broader goals of the trip never got a chance after an explosion on Tuesday at a Gaza hospital that Palestinian officials say killed hundreds of people and sparked protests in several Arab countries. It was exactly the type of incident the president had hoped to avoid by traveling to the region, but the high-risk trip came too late.
Biden supported Israel’s claims that the explosion was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket fired at Israel – an assessment he said had been supported by US intelligence about the incident.
But doubts about the origins of the explosion have done little to calm the fury it has unleashed across the Arab world, where there is distrust in statements by the US and Israeli governments, as well as strong fury over the long-term treatment of Palestinians.
The tragedy led to cancellation of a critical stage of Biden’s visit to Amman where he was supposed to meet King Abdullah II of Jordan, the Egyptian president and the leader of the Palestinian Authority.
See images of the conflict between Israel and Hamas
Source: CNN Brasil
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