Opinion: US Gazapier was a wasted effort in the war between Israel and Hamas
The United States differs from previous empires in that it has no intention of colonizing other countries and peoples. Remarkably, it has helped billions of people with aid programs aimed at feeding, clothing, and healing the world’s suffering nations. While every country acts out of self-interest, America has uniquely helped dozens of other nations in all areas, including their national defense.
Without American help, Germany would never have recovered from its losses in World War II. Although Germany was an enemy, the U.S. Marshall Plan helped it rebuild and made it the healthy and functioning nation it is today. When the terrible AIDS epidemic raged in Africa, killing millions each year, the U.S. generously donated billions. In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel came dangerously close to running out of ammunition and supplies. Disaster was averted by a U.S. emergency airlift that lasted for weeks.
America has changed the world through its innovation and creativity. Former President Barack Obama noted, “The key to our success will be, as it has always been, to remain competitive by developing new products, building new industries and maintaining our role as the global engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation. That is absolutely critical to our future.”
His White House released a strategy on innovation that said, “The societal benefits from innovations typically far exceed the private benefits. For example, the inventions of the telephone, the transistor, the lightbulb, the dishwasher, the laser, the CT scanner, the web browser, and antibiotics have all produced enormous, widespread, and lasting societal benefits that far exceed the commercial gains of the original inventors. General estimates suggest that the private gains from an innovation typically represent only a tiny fraction – a few percent – of the societal value.”
The United States has been able to change the world with innovations researched and developed by its military. The most famous of these world-changing inventions is the Internet. Not far behind is the Global Positioning System (PS), which has saved countless lives by helping to deliver aid in a more efficient manner and helps the average citizen reach their destination without getting lost or asking for directions.
Inventor Eli Whitney (18th-19th century) developed interchangeable parts and received money from the US Congress to build muskets. Although the average person is not as aware of the difference interchangeable parts made to the world as the Internet or GPS, they have had just as big an impact on world events.
The United States has used its military for more than just defensive purposes. It was one of the first nations to repurpose its military as a social engine to improve the world. American presidents have sent troops all over the world to solve global problems. Many solutions require hundreds and even thousands of highly trained people working together, and the military is perfectly suited to these types of tasks. Another problem that soldiers are perfectly suited to solve are problems that require war to rid the world of a dictator who terrorizes his people.
In both World Wars I and II, Europe faced a threatening German threat. With fanatical leaders intent on conquering all of Europe, Germany seemed on the path to victory and could even have become a world-dominating power. It took US military intervention to stop Germany. The same was true of Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator who ruined the lives of his people and spread drugs around the world. American troops invaded Panama and arrested Noriega, and today it is a thriving country. South Korea also owes its freedom and prosperity to tens of thousands of American soldiers.
Although America never used its military to resolve the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian conflict until recently, it has spent over seven decades intervening and resolving the conflicts that plague Israel and its neighbors. Even before the declaration of independence, Israel was pressured by President Harry Truman not to declare its state as he sought to negotiate a peace agreement with Arab countries. Since Truman, every administration has intervened by pressuring, inducing, and even begging for an improvement in relations between Israel and the Palestinians.
So far, all these efforts have failed. Israel is grateful for America’s military aid, its past economic aid, and its diplomatic shield at the United Nations. But Israelis are less grateful for the constant pressure from the United States to make concessions to the Arabs and Palestinians – who clearly have no interest in peace with Israel – in one failed peace process after another.
High costs for little benefit
In its most recent intervention in the region to improve the situation, the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build and repeatedly repair a pier its military built off the coast of Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Recently, the Pentagon announced that the floating pier would be dismantled due to weather conditions. Clearly, a pier built for the sea cannot withstand rain, wind and waves. Due to the security situation in Gaza—Hamas continues to steal humanitarian aid and shoot at Palestinians trying to eat—aid organizations have suspended their work and may not return. This would render the pier pointless, and American officials have said they would not rebuild it.
When President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken floated the idea (pun intended) of building a floating pier off the coast of Gaza, the Israelis scoffed at the idea from the start. The US vowed not to send “troops on the ground,” which doomed the project before it even began. The Israelis viewed the pier as yet another doomed American intervention in the Middle East.
Whether the floating pier was watertight or not was irrelevant. The Palestinians in Gaza have shown time and again that they resist attempts at self-help. After years of watching Hamas divert aid money from Gaza to build terror tunnels, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority (PA) resident politician, and his cronies embezzle foreign aid funds to enrich themselves, it was predictable that building a floating pier to bring aid to Gaza would fail.
The current and all future American administrations should learn a lesson from the failure of the floating pier. To successfully change circumstances, whether to feed people or to end a violent conflict, one can only succeed by looking at the problem from a local perspective. Imposing a Western mindset based on Western values on a people with a different perspective and different values is doomed to failure.
For mediation to end the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian conflict to be successful, U.S. officials must understand the perspectives of the parties to the conflict and develop a strategy based on the values of the people involved, not their own.
The author is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and mayor of Mitzpe Yeriho, Israel. She lives with her husband and six children.
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