The Israel-Hamas ceasefire and US-Israel relations, explained

The Israel-Hamas ceasefire and US-Israel relations, explained
Source: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, Reuters
American President Joe Biden has spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu six different times since the beginning of the conflict to discuss ways of bringing it to an end.

  • A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza went into effect on May 21 after 11 days of violence.
  • Before the ceasefire, more than 4,000 rockets had been fired at Israel from Gaza and Israel had launched airstrikes that had destroyed around 1,000 residential units in Gaza.
  • More than 230 people in Gaza had been killed by the Israeli airstrikes and 12 in Israel had been killed by the rockets fired from Gaza.

Why was there such a discrepancy in the number of deaths?

  • The majority of those killed were civilians and the reason for such a huge difference in the number of deaths between the two is thanks to an Israeli defense system called the “Iron Dome.”
  • At least 75,000 people in Gaza were sheltered in United Nations-run schools, but the Israeli airstrikes completely destroyed mosques and COVID-19 testing laboratories and damaged hospitals, clinics and schools.
  • The Israeli airstrikes also cut off fresh water and sewage systems in Gaza, as well as residents’ electricity.
  • The ceasefire was mediated by the Egyptian government in part because of the leverage Egypt has over Hamas.
  • Egypt sent mediators to both Gaza and Israel in order to reach a ceasefire. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi also visited French President Emmanuel Macron and Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Paris to discuss the conflict.

What role did Biden play?

  • American President Joe Biden has spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu six different times since the beginning of the conflict to discuss ways of bringing it to an end.
  • But Biden has refused to condemn Israeli airstrikes against civilians in Gaza, which has made the president the target of intense criticism from members of his own party back home.
  • Experts believe that Biden did little to bring about the ceasefire and that a bigger role was played by the Israeli government and Hamas, both of whom likely decided the conflict no longer served their own political interests.

Where is the US-Israel relationship now?

  • Experts seem to think that Biden kept a friendly tone toward Israel in an effort to ensure a positive working relationship between the US and Israel continued.
  • Some think that if Biden had pushed harder on Israel to come to a ceasefire agreement, the move could have backfired and that the United States’ influence in the region would have been weakened.
  • For the US, Israel is an essential ally in the region and Biden almost certainly had that in mind when determining what his response to the conflict would be.

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