Never mind that US President Joe Biden was no longer welcome in Amman, where he was supposed to take part in a mini-summit with Jordanian King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Never mind that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also invited to the Jordanian capital, promptly returned to Ramallah to declare three days of national mourning, at a time when Gaza was counting the dead at Al Ahli Arab Hospital. Despite rebuffs from his Arab allies, Biden took off for the Middle East on the night of Tuesday, October 18. He would go only to Tel Aviv. His trip was cut in half, revealing the region's lack of understanding about American support for Israel. This is a support that Washington wants to be unconditionnal, while no one in the Arab world cares whether it was the Jewish state or Palestinian factions who hit the hospital: The only thing that counts are the dead, and they are Palestinians.
In Tel-Aviv, Biden was eagerly awaited. On Friday, he spoke with families of American citizens who had been taken hostage by Hamas, even before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Israeli families. Biden was reassuring a country that felt abandoned by its own government and security forces after the October 7 attack.
According to his staff, Biden was going to ask his Israeli "friends" "tough questions" about the continuing blockage of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the fate of the hostages and the risks of the ground operation being prepared against the Gaza Strip. While the Israeli government has stated its intention to annihilate the military forces and government of Hamas, it has revealed nothing of its plans for Gaza once this objective has been achieved. According to the Israeli press, Biden was set to pose these questions at the very heart of Israel's decision-making machine when he sat in on the restricted "war cabinet" that directs operations around Netanyahu.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was invited to join this body dedicated to guiding and validating the army's plans. It is necessary to go back to the 1973 Yom Kippur War to find a precedent for such a situation. Henry Kissinger, then head of US diplomacy, sat in the security cabinet alongside Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Meir's political career had already been doomed by the Egyptian army's surprise incursion into Sinai.
On Monday, on his return from a stormy trip to Amman, Blinken spent part of the morning face-to-face with Netanyahu in Jerusalem. After taking part in the War Cabinet meeting, Blinken settled into an office in the army headquarters in Tel Aviv, next to the room where
Netanyahu was meeting with other ministers. The prime minister kept moving from one room to another. Then he spoke again with Blinken until around 3 am.
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