US faces dilemma on Gaza conflict

Deep binding with Israel at odds with Washington's global strategy, as it lacks clear vision in Middle East

Seeking strategic contraction from the Middle East is what the United States has tried to do for years, but the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not only forced the US to increase its presence in the region, but may also bring challenges for its global strategy, analysts said.

Mounting casualties among Palestinian civilians, along with acute shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel, have intensified calls by global leaders for a pause in the fighting or a cease-fire.

Gaza health authorities said on Friday that at least 9,061 people had been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its assault on the enclave of 2.3 million people in retaliation for deadly attacks by Hamas militants on southern Israel.

But Israel has dismissed those calls, saying on Friday that it had surrounded the Hamas stronghold Gaza City, signaling a new phase in the monthlong conflict. It came before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Israel.

In recent years, the US has been reducing its military presence in the Middle East, as it tried to shift its strategic focus to the Asia-Pacific region. However, after the outbreak of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the US has rebuilt its military presence in the Middle East, offering military assistance and seeking to pass a bill to fund Israel, experts said.

Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations at China Foreign Affairs University, said the US clearly lacks vision in dealing with Middle East issues and has lost the impartial role and function it should be playing as a major power in shaping lasting stability and peace in the Middle East.

"As the US stands on one side of the conflict, it cannot be a mediator nor a promoter of peace, but it has instead been an aggravator of regional disputes and turbulence," Li said.

Moreover, the US is finding itself getting stuck in the region again, as it will inevitably transfer its resources in the Asia-Pacific and Europe to the Middle East to support its closest ally there.

The technical shift would be "a very big setback for the overall implementation of the US' global strategy", he said, as the transfer is not due to a change in strategic thinking and the conflict may not fundamentally change the long-term strategic layout of the US.

"The US has to face the reality that its intention to focus on competition with other major powers would become more difficult in practice and would finally fail, due to a series of practical challenges such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he said. "It is actually time for the US to reflect on itself."

Two urgent fronts

Zhang Yifei, an associate researcher from the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the conflict is distracting the US from its strategy of focusing on power competition and has also put the US in a moral dilemma.

Once the conflict escalates and expands, the US will have to work on two urgent fronts at the same time — the Russia-Ukraine battlefield and the Middle East battlefield — which will inevitably distract the US from the "Indo-Pacific". Then, the US' entire strategic eastward shift, which began in the Barack Obama administration, may be in for a major reversal.

"So militarily, it's faced with such a chaotic situation," the researcher said.

He said the US will also face a moral dilemma, as the global community calls on parties in the conflict to put in place a humanitarian truce and make every effort to prevent the situation from escalating further.

The United Nations General Assembly last week overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for an "immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce" in Gaza.

The US firmly supports Israel not only for strategic interests, but also for cultural and religious links, Zhang said. However, as the sole superpower bragging about human rights and justice, the US will definitely face criticism or even become isolated if it fails to care for humanitarian crises or respect the UN framework.