Flamingos have long legs but small feet. The can fly — up to 20,000 feet and 40 miles per hour, the internet advises — and a group of them is called a flamboyance, a fun fact I just love. They are adorable in their awkwardness, and can also be quite fierce. They eat algae and shrimp and have adapted to live in extreme conditions. Pick your metaphor.
Along with Gillon, I reached out this week to Michael Oren, who is both a student of Middle East history — PhD from Princeton — and a person who has lived it (Israeli paratrooper in the 1982 Lebanon War, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. a decade ago). Oren was more than dubious about Biden’s prospects of ending the conflict — “How?” he kept asking (see “zillion good reasons” not to try, above).
I — and Biden, and most experts on the region — actually think the how is fairly straightforward: Two states for two indigenous peoples, with security guaranteed by some international force; democratic and human rights for everybody; normalization of relations between Israel and the broader Arab world; isolation and punishment of terror groups and their patron, Iran. But “how” is also the wrong question right now. The right question is “why?”
Why should Biden pick this, of all things, to fill the final days of his remarkable half-century of public service?
The short-term answer is the sheer suffering: The staggering death toll and starvation in Gaza; the horrifying number, 293, that Rachel Goldberg-Polin has taped to her shirt symbolizing the days her son, Hersh, and more than 100 others have been held in captivity by Hamas. It needs to end.
Longer-term, the “why,” at least for most American Jews and non-Jewish Zionists like Biden, is to preserve Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state. As I have argued before, the conflict with the Palestinians is Israel’s to solve because if it stretches into its second century, international isolation and demographic destiny will inevitably turn the place into Palestine.
Netanyahu may think, like the Vietnamese in Johnson’s era and the Soviets in Reagan’s, that he’ll have a better shot with the next occupant of the Oval Office. But former President Donald Trump is a fair-weathered friend to Israel, happy to move the embassy but fundamentally an isolationist who won’t foot the bill for a forever war. And while Vice President Kamala Harris pledged support for Israel’s security after meeting with Netanyahu yesterday, she also made clear her sympathy for the Palestinians, saying “we cannot look away” from the tragedy in Gaza, “and I will not be silent.”
Biden himself said on Monday, the day after his announcement that he would no longer seek reelection, that he would devote the next six months to ending the war in Gaza and bringing Hersh and the other hostages home.
As I watched the president’s Oval Office address to the nation on Wednesday night, I was at first disappointed to see him list Gaza second-to-last on a laundry list of a dozen lame-duck to-dos, behind the economy, gun violence, climate crisis, Supreme Court reform, Ukraine and a bunch more. But if you squint a little, you can see in Biden’s rationale for stepping aside — for doing that hardest of political things — a hint of a roadmap to climb that seemingly impossible geopolitical mountain.
“Presidents are not kings,” he said. That includes Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who just finished the 19th year of his four-year-term.
“Reject fear,” Biden advised. Fear is the main obstacle to Middle East peace.
“Choose between moving forward and backward,” he demanded. The only choice for Israel and the Palestinians is a deal that focuses on the future, not the dueling narratives of the past.
“We are a great nation because we are good people,” he said, meaning America and Americans, but equally applicable to Israel and the Jews. “The sacred cause of this country is larger than any one of us.” He could be talking to you, Mr. Netanyahu. And, finally, “history is in your hands.”
Biden upended history on Sunday with his unprecedented announcement. The next six months are in his hands. Fly, fierce flamingo, fly.
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