To save innocent lives in Gaza, the US can and should force a cease-fire

The U.S. is responsible for killing many ordinary Gazans as it has been providing Israel with military aid that makes such carnage possible. This is because Israel’s war to eradicate Hamas has become a war against all Palestinian people.

Last week, the Biden administration bypassed Congress and sent Israel munitions that enabled it to continue the killing of blameless people. As well, the U.S. was the only member of the United Nations Security Council to block a resolution for an immediate cease-fire, while France supported it and Britain abstained.

In more than two months of intensive fighting, Israel has killed more than 17,700 civilians, more than 5,300 of whom are children, displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, turned much of Gaza City into rubble and expanded and intensified its air and ground attacks in the southern city of Khan Younis. 

Displacement means that almost 2 million Palestinians have no roof over their heads, little or no access to water and food, no sanitation, no schools or work, no health care services and no clean air to breathe, but have the certainty that they could die or be wounded in the next bombardment. Israel too, has about 200,000 internally displaced people, but they have places to stay and make-do schools for their children. 

But Israel is far from achieving its original goal of eradicating Hamas from the Strip. Though it has killed many Hamas fighters and leaders, it is unlikely to achieve its goal of total annihilation.

Israel’s strategy in all wars has been to establish facts on the ground before agreeing to a cease-fire. This has been, for example, the case at the end of the Six-Day War in 1967. In the war on Gaza, the facts that Israel wants to establish on the ground seem to include the displacement of the Palestinians of Gaza so that many of them would flee, wiping out Hamas, playing a role in the management of the area after the war and possibly annexing all or parts of the Gaza Strip. Once Israel establishes such goals, it will stop fighting, giving the appearance it is obeying the international community.

It is understandable and justified for Israel to go after the Hamas fighters that killed more than 1,200, mostly Israelis, savagely raped women and young girls, mutilated many others and abducted more than 240 men, women and children, 105 of whom were exchanged recently for 240 Palestinians jailed in Israel. But this is no justification for a collective punishment of innocent Palestinians.

Responses by the Biden administration and Western European countries over the past two months have been disappointing. Declarations of support immediately after Hamas’s invasion were a welcome sign that the international community cared about Israel. But as the war progressed and became a war against all Palestinians, such a response has been too mild to stop Israel’s indiscriminate killings. 

Initially, the Biden administration told Israel to refrain from killing Palestinian civilians. Later, Vice President Kamala Harris increased the pressure on Israel to minimize its harm to ordinary people. More recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated that it “remains imperative that put a premium on civilian protection” because of “a gap between … the intent to protect civilians and the actual results that we’re seeing on the ground.” 

Despite these strong words, Israel’s killing of the innocent continued.

This leaves the U.S. no other option but to conclude that its words are not producing the desired results. It’s time for the U.S. to take action that will force Israel to declare a cease-fire and hammer out a peaceful resolution, such as a two-state solution that Biden supports and that both groups had agreed on in principle twice before in the Oslo accord and in the Abraham Accord. 

That action is simple: Cut all military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel, thus forcing it to declare a cease-fire and negotiate a peaceful solution to the conflict.

President Biden’s support for Israel is very clear, as is mine. But when a friend like Israel continues the killing of innocent people, its friends must put their foot down. Instead, regrettably, Biden has been dragging his feet. Biden must stop being a nice beta male and put an impudent Netanyahu in his place.

A peaceful solution for the conflict must be brokered by all countries in the international community that have been concerned about this war, including the U.S., Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Britain, France and Germany.

It’s time for the international community to support Palestinians’ self-determination much like its support for the Jews of Palestine in 1947 to establish the independent state of Israel.

Such a peaceful solution to this bitter conflict will serve the Israelis, Palestinians and the world well. 

Avraham Shama is a retired university professor and administrator. He fought in the Six-Day War.