Gaza crisis will accelerate America’s decline

Jin Liangxiang    source：Tehran Times

The latest round of tensions between Israel and Palestine will continue for some time. Despite uncertainties of the endgame, the implications at both regional and global levels are already visible. One of the most evident could be the further decline of the U.S. in the region and in the world as the U.S. had been demonstrating its own hypocrisy in full manners, which will further expand the divide between the U.S. and the world as dissatisfactions grow.

Firstly, the crisis would increase the divide between American public and politicians. There have long been divisions in the United States regarding its policy toward Israel and the Palestine-Israel conflict in general. While the White House and the Congress would resolutely stand with Israel, intellectuals, scholars and middle-classes are very clear that American governments are spending their revenues on issues irrelevant with its own national interests. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their famous book titled as The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy had well demonstrated the disagreement that reasonable American academics had for American politicians.

The latest interactions between U.S. politicians and Israel would result in more divide in American society and policy making community. The Gaza crisis saw immediate reaction from the White House as Joseph Biden travelled to Israel and manifested American staunch support for Israel, and asked Congress for aid amounted to billions of dollars to Israel in his public speech. But American public was actually not in tune with the White House and the Congress. Understanding occupation as the root cause of the crisis, American cities including New York and Washington had seen robust demonstrations against Israel’s occupation and U.S. policy as well.

The last decade had seen that the U.S. had become more and more divided between the people and politicians as more and more people were expressing dissatisfaction with politicians. The current dissatisfaction on Biden’s policy toward Israel will expectedly further increase the divide between American society and politicians.

Secondly, the crisis will increase the divide between the U.S. and its Arab allies. It is true that Arab countries would like to see in some way strong U.S. presence in the region so as to get security protection. But it is equally true that no Arab countries had been sincerely identified with U.S. policy in the region as the U.S. had frequently interfered into their internal affairs, and had seriously undermined the legitimate cause of Palestinians’ nationhood with its biased approach. And the last decade had particularly seen the Arab world had gradually waken from the illusion of American protection as the U.S. were more a betrayer rather than a protector.

Gaza crisis, just like many of the previous, had once again exposed America’s extremely biased policy in Palestine-Israel conflict. Instead of taking minimal efforts to deescalate the tensions, the U.S. had been sheltering Israel’s indiscriminate killings in the Gaza Strip without talking about Israeli occupation, which further undermined the minimal trust Arab countries had for America. The anger was manifested as Mohammad Bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, intentionally kept Antony Blinken waiting for 8 hours for a meeting, and Arab leaders unanimously refused to meet Joseph Biden after his fifteen-hour flight to the Middle East shortly after the breakout of Gaza crisis.

The enlarged divide will predictably nullify the recent various U.S. visions about the Middle East including the plan to build a Middle East version of NATO, Abraham Process, which was about normalization of relations between Israel and Arab countries, and IMEC, by which the U.S. had intended to build an economic corridor from India to Arab Peninsular, Israel and Europe at least for some time.

Thirdly, the crisis will increase the divide between the U.S. and other parts of the world. It is true that the United States had been regarded as leadership in the Western world, but its leadership had never been recognized by other parts of the world despite its own efforts to describe itself as leadership of the world. The other parts of the world were too much aware of the destructiveness of its hegemony, arrogance, selfishness (America First) and hypocrisy.

Gaza crisis could be meaningful in many ways, but the prominent one should be another full exposure of U.S. hypocrisy. The U.S. had been actively and vehemently criticizing the human rights issues of other countries including China, Iran and even Arab countries in the name of humanitarianism. But when the real humanitarian crisis took place in Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s besiege and occupation, the U.S. not only did not criticize Israel but sheltered and even encouraged Israel’s actions devastating the situation.

Some European leaders did flock to Israel to show their unity with Joseph Biden, but it seemed that the streets of the U.S. and European countries were telling an opposite part of the story. They demonstrated against decades of occupation, Gaza siege, demolition of houses and the coming of more serious humanitarian crisis. The manifestation of U.S. hypocrisy will further expand the divide between the U.S. and other parts of the world.

All in all, it is true that the U.S. is still the strongest power economically and militarily in the world. But the world including its own people, Arabs and muslins and people of western and non-western countries have become more and more aware of the hypocrisy of the U.S. government. That will contribute greatly to and even accelerate the decline of the U.S.