President Joe Biden vowed that the United States must not retreat from the world in his farewell address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, as Israel and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon pushed closer to conflict and Israel’s brutal campaign against Hamas in Gaza approached its one-year milestone.
The Pentagon said Monday that it will send a limited number of extra US troops to the Middle East to bolster the approximately 40,000 already present.
The White House maintains that Israel and Hezbollah still have time to de-escalate.
“Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” Biden said, adding that despite the rising bloodshed, a diplomatic approach is the only way to achieve peace.
Biden had a hopeful outlook for the Middle East when he addressed the U.N. just a year ago. In that speech, Biden spoke of a “sustainable, integrated Middle East” coming into view.
At the time, economic relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors were improving with implementation of the Abraham Accords that Israel signed with Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration.
Biden’s team helped resolve a long-running Israel-Lebanon maritime dispute that had held back gas exploration in the region. And Israel-Saudi normalization talks were progressing, a game-changing alignment for the region if a deal could be landed.
Eighteen days later, Biden’s Middle East hopes came crashing down. Hamas militants stormed into Israel killing 1,200, taking some 250 hostage, and spurring a bloody war that has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza and led the region into a complicated downward spiral.
Now, the conflict is threatening to metastasize into a multi-front war and leave a lasting scar on Biden’s presidential legacy.
Israel and Hezbollah traded strikes again Tuesday as the death toll from a massive Israeli bombardment climbed to nearly 560 people and thousands fled from southern Lebanon. It’s the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
Israel has urged residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate from homes and other buildings where it claimed Hezbollah has stored weapons, saying the military would conduct “extensive strikes” against the militant group.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, has launched dozens of rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for strikes last week that killed a top commander and dozens of fighters. Dozens were also killed last week and hundreds more wounded after hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah militants exploded, a sophisticated attack that was widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.
Israel’s leadership launched its counterattacks at a time of growing impatience with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s persistent launching of missiles and drones across the Israel-Lebanon border after Hamas started the war with its brazen attack on Oct. 7.
Biden also talked about Artificial Intelligence and the need for the world to act now in putting up guard rails to protect citizens of the world from any dangers it may pose
And the need “to uphold our principles as we seek to responsibly manage the competition with China so it does not veer into conflict.”
