The Absurd Pier

The US has announced plans to build a pier to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza. A friend on my feed shared a comment calling this is a ploy to secure a permanent US military presence in Gaza.

This is the kind of paranoid, dumb advocacy for Palestinian liberation which frustrates me, attributing not just malice to opponents of Palestinian liberation but every possible malice, defying logic.

To President Biden, the horrors in Gaza are a distraction from domestic concerns and the upcoming election. He wants an end to criticism of ongoing US support to Israel despite the brutality of their attack on Gaza, but also wants to keep the alliance with Israel, because most Democrats still support Israel and US military strategy depends on Israel as a place where we can land planes.

Biden wants the Gaza crisis off of his desk as soon as possible; creating a permanent military presence in Gaza is a nightmare for him, not a goal. The Absurd Pier goes out of its way to be both materially & theatrically not-permanent. It keeps US troops’ literal boots off of the literal ground.

The US has a moral obligation as not just a major power but as a longtime ally of Israel to support Palestinian liberation, and I will not pretend that the Absurd Pier meets that obligation. But it is good on the merits, and given the constraints that Biden imagines he faces, a very clever move.

It allows the US to provide material support to the people of Gaza — more than the US has ever done for Palestinians before — without sacrificing the alliance with Israel we insist on retaining.

Doing this as a military operation deters interference which has thus far curtailed bringing aid. The Egyptians and other Arab states do not want to tangle with the US over it; they will not go that far out of their way. If Israel interferes with the aid effort, it undercuts American voters’ support for Israel, giving Biden cover to put more pressure on them or even sever the alliance. If Hamas interferes — as they could, being more interested in glory than the wellbeing of the Palestinian people — US would then have a stake in the conduct of the “war on Hamas”, enabling pressure on Israel to stop doing brutal stupid things to the people of Gaza which put Americans in danger. It even signals that a return to the status quo ante of Israel’s blockade of Gaza is unacceptable.

Take the modest win.