It’s been four months since Joe Biden embraced Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and urged a nation in mourning to avoid being consumed by rage after the attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7. Now, with Israel’s war with Hamas advancing through the devastated Gaza Strip and tens of thousands reported dead, the US finds itself in the last place it wanted to be in the Middle East.
Its main ally, Israel, isn’t listening to it, with Prime Minister Netanyahu not heeding President Biden’s pleas to do more to limit the number of civilians killed in airstrikes and to move toward another cease-fire. The US is also now facing an enemy it never wanted to take on. Groups backed by Iran have seized the moment of chaos, carrying out a record number of attacks on US and allied military assets in the past month. They’ve heightened tensions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and convulsed global shipping routes. The US has sent battleships to the Red Sea and carried out retaliatory airstrikes even as it engages in frantic diplomacy to avoid triggering a wider regional war. As Israel’s military operations advance through Gaza toward the Egyptian border and Palestinians are crammed into an ever-smaller patch of land in the southern city of Rafah, the fallout appears set to continue, with the death toll reaching more than 28,000 by Feb. 12, according to health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza.
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