LETTER: Muddled US Middle East strategy

James Cunningham’s letter was an excellent reflection of just how complicated the situation is in that part of the world, and the effectively impossible role the US has to play there (“Blinken’s figleaf initiative”, January 10).

If US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s Middle East strategy does seem somewhat muddled and hard to understand, that’s because it is. At least up to a point. But it’s hardly surprising.

The US is Israel’s most important ally, and Israel is the US’s most important ally in the Middle East, but as America’s influence as a peacemaker in the region continues to wane in the wake of two objectively disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s no real surprise that the Biden administration has had to play its cards more carefully in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, especially in an election year.

Yet fundamentally it’s unquestionably true that the US is entirely on Israel’s side in this conflict, even as Biden and his officials try to push for a future peace. And rightly so. What is notable about Cunningham’s letter, and so many like it, is a complete lack of context for what this war is about: a liberal democracy responding to the worst terrorist attack on its soil in its history by radical Islamist Jihadis with clearly stated genocidal intentions. It’s like 9/11, but with the enemy on the doorstep rather than a world away.

I’m no Netanyahu supporter, but the idea that any other leader would act with more restraint than he has against relentless attacks from genocidal terrorist organisations (both Hamas and Hezbollah) is patently absurd. Is the two-state solution “dead and buried”? I hope not, but it certainly is if Hamas remains in charge of Gaza.

Ilan Preskovsky
Glensan

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