Against the backdrop of the ghastly scenes of starvation in Gaza, this week’s UN conference on reinvigorating a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is out of step with reality. Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza and its increasingly brazen efforts to annex the West Bank have rendered the two-state solution—long on life support if not dead already—completely unviable. The more urgent and important challenge is to achieve a ceasefire and surge humanitarian aid. Conversations about a “political horizon” should come later.
Given its complicity in the situation in Gaza, the United States has a strong moral reason to pressure Israel into an immediate ceasefire, allowing aid to flow into Gaza. But it is also in the United States’ strategic interest to wield our significant leverage over Israel.
U.S. military support and assistance for Israel—a wealthy country, with a per capita GDP slightly higher than the United Kingdom’s—is a drain on U.S. resources and puts Americans in the region in danger. The United States has roughly 40,000 military personnel in the Middle East, and they have been attacked by Iran’s “axis of resistance” nearly 200 times since October 7. These attacks not only risk American lives but threaten to pull the United States into another forever war in the region.
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