Former Pentagon advisor on the Middle East, Jasmine El-Gamal, stated in an interview with Harici that attacks on civilians by Israel in Gaza will persist following the current ceasefire. El-Gamal explained that it would be politically risky for President Biden to be perceived as anything less than fully supportive of Israel with his re-election around the corner.
Jasmine El-Gamal served as a Middle East advisor to the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) from 2008 to 2013. She also held the position of Special Assistant for Policy to three Undersecretaries of Defense from 2013 to 2015.
Currently, El-Gamal was a Senior Fellow in the Middle East program at the Atlantic Council, where she concentrated on analyzing US policy in the Middle East and Syria.
Her commentaries have been published in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic, Newsweek, Time Magazine, CNN, Al Jazeera, Al Hurra, L’Orient du Jour, Sawt al Azhar, Al Masry Al Youm, Le Figaro, and various other international publications.
Jasmine El-Gamal assessed the Gaza ceasefire process, US policy towards Israel and the Middle East, the correlation between the Biden administration’s support for Tel Aviv and domestic politics and the presidential election process, and the racism that pervades US politics against the Middle East and Muslims during her interview with journalist Esra Karahindiba.
*Israel’s collective punishment method in Gaza and its attacks that killed more than 14 thousand people, including 6 thousand children, led to a change in the international community’s attitude towards Tel Aviv. Leaders of Arab and Muslim countries are visiting with calls for a ceasefire. European leaders are making visits. The United Nations and other international institutions are calling for a ceasefire. Global South leaders call for a ceasefire. Hundreds of thousands of people, not only in the East but also in Western countries, condemn Israel’s actions and march in support of Gaza. Yet how can Tel Aviv act so recklessly? Thanks to US support? Besides, finally a humanitarian break is agreed by both sides, brokered by the US and Qatar. The agreement also consists hostage exchanges. Qatar says the break may be extended. Before US defended ceasefire would help Hamas. What has changed now and will there be any change in their approach?
Israeli leaders have said that Israel will do what it needs to do, whatever it might take, to dismantle and destroy Hamas. While they have the support of the US government, the US has also stated that Israel must abide by international law. The US has also said that its pressure on Israel behind the scenes helped convince Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept the current pause in fighting and hostage exchange. From what Israeli leaders have said, we can expect to see Israel continue its attacks on Hamas, with further civilian casualties, once this current pause ends.
*Even Arab countries close to the US are reacting to Biden’s infinite support to Israel. Why does Washington support Israel’s actions materially, morally and militarily, at the risk of further deterioration of its relations in the Middle East, cracks in the West and even Beijing gaining more influence in the region through mediation efforts? Does it have anything to do with the influence of the Jewish lobby in the country and the Presidential elections?
Support for Israel has always been a bi-partisan issue in the US and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. So, given that President Biden is running for re-election next year, it would be politically dangerous for him to be seen as not 100% supportive of Israel. In addition, President Biden has said in the past he has deep empathy for Israel and he sees what happened on October 7 as “Israel’s 9/11” so he is personally inclined to support them in their war against terrorism. However, that support has been now criticised by many Democratic voters, especially young people and Arab and Muslim Americans, many of whom have said they will not vote for the Democratic Party next year. Biden is also facing increasing pressure now from his own party to implement a full ceasefire, due to the alarming rate in civilian deaths over the course of the war.
*What does the US understand from the traditional and on-paper Palestinian policy of ‘two-state solution’? In the period leading up to the Second Intifada after the Oslo Accords and today, Israel continues to build illegal settlements in the occupied lands without being subject to any sanctions. Why doesn’t Washington take any steps against Tel Aviv to prevent Israeli expansionism not only in Gaza but in all Palestinian territories?
While the US has not historically placed any significant pressure on Israel for settlement building, it has always publicly stated that settlement building is not helpful to peace talks and urges Israelis governments to reduce the rate or stop settlement building. However, Israel has continued to build settlements in the West Bank, and many right-wing Israelis, including the current Prime Minister and his extremist coalition partners like Minister Ben-Gvir, say it was a mistake for then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to dismantle settlements in Gaza in 2005. Many of those voices are calling today for the re-occupation of Gaza, which President Biden and Anthony Blinken have stated the US will not accept. That said, settlements have always been a huge obstacle to the two-state solution favoured by the United States. Settlers in the West Bank have been harassing, displacing and attacking Palestinians in the West Bank in an increasingly aggressive manner since the Oct 7 attacks, which has led to President Biden making the unusual move of announcing he will impose sanctions on “extremists” in the West Bank. It’s unclear, however, exactly what that means and how it will be implemented. Minister Ben-Gvir is extremely supportive of settlers in the West Bank, which further complicates the prospects for a two-state solution, since Prime Minister Netanyahu needs Ben Gvir to be able to maintain his governing coalition to stay in power and therefore not likely to get in Ben-Gvir’s way. That said, the language we have seen from the US government in recent weeks regarding settler violence, coupled with the sanctions announcement, is the strongest we’ve seen yet from Israel’s closest ally.
*Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave a statement to CNN’s Amanpour on the tunnel issue underneath Shifa Hospital saying “we built those shelters by ourselves 40-50 years ago”. Today, Tel Aviv claims that Hamas built those tunnels to use as basements. Besides so many footages of Israelis mocking with Palestinian casualties. Also, BBC claimed that IDF’s so-called detections in Shifa Hospital were staged. Will those developments pave the way for the US to have another point of view on what is really happening?
The US has remained staunchly in Israel’s corner when it comes to Hamas tunnels underneath hospitals, even in light of Ehud Barak’s statements about Israel’s involvement in building the tunnels under Al Shifa hospital. The US has been alarmed in private at the civilian death rate in Gaza but remains firmly supportive of Israel’s goal to defeat Hamas, and has said publicly that there can be no return to the pre-Oct 7 status quo.
*One of the advisers of Obama, Stuart Seldowitz was captured on video calling a halal food vendor in New York City a “terrorist” and saying the death of 4,000 Palestinian children in Gaza “wasn’t enough”. This person previously served as deputy director of the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs. Can we understand that the US have similar examples of hatred against Palestinians or Islamophobic approach at higher level? Can you comment on this incident?
This incident was very unfortunate but familiar. I wrote my own story on my social media and I want to bring that here also. I met numerous people with similar underlying racism/dehumanisation to Stuart Seldowitz during my time in US government and before that when I was a young translator in Iraq and GTMO. I was 20 yrs old when 9/11 happened. For many Arab and Muslim Americans, it was a scary time. We watched our identities and loyalties questioned and our religion and heritage securitised and militarised. That was the beginning. When the Iraq war started, I decided to serve as a translator, partly to witness for myself why we were going to war and also to do my part to ensure a lack of or mis- communication didn’t aggravate the fog of war. It was there I first saw the impact of that militarisation. I did the same in GTMO in 2004; when Donald Rumsfeld said the US kept “the worst of the worst” there, I wanted to see it for myself. By then I knew we had been lied to for years. Later at the Pentagon, again I ran into people like Stuart. By then the “war on terror” had been going for almost a decade. Attitudes towards the Middle East were shaped by that. Many people were trained to look at the region strictly through a military lens. For US officials, the Middle East was “quicksand” that “dragged” the US into conflict and was to be “depressurised,” “deescalated” or, preferably, avoided – right up until today, when the Biden team’s job was to “keep the Middle East way from his desk”. I remember reviewing a Joint Staff strategy document for my boss at the Pentagon which described the Middle East as a historical “Sunni-Shia” conflict. I fought to take that language out (we eventually did). But that type of thinking remains. So when we see people like Stuart speaking in those terms, talking about “Mukhabarat” and torture and the like, it’s not in a vacuum. It’s just the way the Middle East is largely viewed inside policy and military circles. It is no wonder then, that someone like Brett McGurk can so casually state there would be no humanitarian surge nor respite in Gaza until hostages are released. The environment he’s part of isn’t primed to treat the Middle East as a region full of humans, only problems to be solved or avoided. The way to change that, of course, begins with changing the narrative and lens through which the region is viewed; having more diversity in leadership that will offer different perspectives; and by condemning at the highest levels people like Stuart and his actions. Another example I just remembered is when a US Army colonel at GTMO sent a racist email about Muslims to all the military staff, minus the translators. Someone forwarded it to me. I wrote a letter to our commander and all the translators signed it. The Colonel had to apologize to all the translators (who were all American as well, mind you) and spend time with us to learn about Islam and Arab culture… Let’s just say that evening ended with him belly dancing on top of a picnic table after eating my colleague’s tabbouli.
