US mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times and CNN reported this week that a de facto blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces has resulted in mass starvation among the enclave’s civilian population.
US President Joe Biden has even said in his recent interview with MSNBC that he has a “red line” in the Gaza Strip, insisting that “you can't have another 30,000 Palestinians dead as a consequence of” trying to take down Hamas.
Such a change in rhetoric in a country that has so far been Israel’s staunchest ally likely has something to do with the upcoming US presidential election, argued Robinder Sachdev, a geopolitical and economic diplomacy analyst and founder president of The Imagindia Institute.
“I would say if there were no elections in this year of the president, let's say the presidential elections were next year, you would not have seen any change in President Biden's stance towards the Israel crisis,” Sachdev told Sputnik.
Ezzat Saad, a former Egyptian ambassador to Russia, offered a similar take on the subject as he argued that there has not been a substantial change in the mainstream media attitude “concerning the Palestinian perspective of the war.”
“These are cosmetics under some pressure from the American public opinion including the leftist wing of the Democratic Party and also the Arab and Muslim Americans,” Saad postulated.
He also predicted that “there will not be a U-Turn in the American position,” as the United States has so far been quietly supporting Israel with weapon shipments and shielding Tel Aviv from international condemnation at the UN Security Council.
“The aim here is to give the Israeli leadership more time to kill more Palestinians and to pretend an illusionary victory,” Saad remarked.
His sentiment was echoed by Sachdev who said he doubts that there will be “any big change in American policy.”
“America is continuing to fund. America is continuing to stand with Israel in the UN Security Council and wherever,” Sachdev said.
“The American administration of Joe Biden is under pressure due to simply their voting blocs right now,” he continued. “If any changes in American policy towards Israel-Gaza conflict happen, they will happen only and only because of cold calculations of world banks. There is otherwise no change going to be an American policy with respect to supporting, standing by and going along with Israel.”
According to Sachdev, Washington “is planning to ride both boats at the same time”: that is, the White House seeks to maintain its “complete support of Israel” while simultaneously giving “lip service to humanitarian aid.”
Regarding Biden’s recent promise to build a temporary pier at the Gaza Strip to help supply the besieged enclave, Sachdev suggested that the flow of maritime traffic to Gaza that would ensue could be exploited by Israel to displace Palestinians from the region.
Pointing out that Egypt continues to stubbornly resist Israel’s attempt to drive Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egyptian territory, the analyst speculated that Tel Aviv may push for other countries– the United States, UAE, Saudi Arabia or Turkiye, for example – to “evacuate Palestinians from Gaza,” effectively driving them from their homeland.