Biden's electioneering may put brake on Israel

Hours after Hamas fired a barrage of rockets into Israel from Gaza, which set off air raid sirens as far away as Tel Aviv for the first time in months, Israel bombed refugee camps in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Sunday killing at least 35 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian sources.

Although the latest bombing of Rafah was a retaliation against Hamas' earlier attack, all signs clearly show that, despite the wide opposition of the international community, the Israeli government is set on carrying out its war plan in Gaza to the end, in a bid to eliminate Hamas in Gaza and make the Palestinian enclave a buffer zone for the security of Israel.

Yet in doing so, it risks losing the support of the US, as US President Joe Biden will not want the civilian dearly toll in Gaza to continue rising as the presidential election draws near.

Biden told the media earlier this month that if Israel goes into Rafah, "we're not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells used", due to concerns about the well-being of the more than 1 million civilians sheltering there.

Israel has relied on the support of the US for its military operation to eliminate Hamas in Gaza, with Washington happy to oblige as it is using Israel as its hatchet man to eliminate hostile forces supported by Iran, its archenemy in the region.

Yet for all the Biden administration's virtue signaling, it must have given Tel Aviv its endorsement to label the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East as a terrorist organization.

Knesset, Israel's parliament, is set to hold a preliminary vote in which it is expected to designate the UNRWA as such.

That speaks volumes of the US' hypocrisy regarding the suffering of the Palestinians in the region, as the UNRWA is the main relief service provider for the 5.9 Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.

Last week, waves swept away a US floating pier newly installed on the Gaza coast to transfer aid to the strip zone. The construction of the floating pier cost $320 million and was completed about two weeks ago.

If the US really cared about the humanitarian concerns in Gaza, it should have long stopped providing offensive weapons to Israel and pressed it to open all land crossings to Gaza and to secure aid trucks going in.

The floating pier easily destroyed by waves is nothing but an irony exposing the callousness of the US.