News, analysis, and background on the ongoing conflict.
Few matters are able to rile global publics quite like war in Israel-Palestine. Following Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which left more than 1,200 dead, people have taken to the streets around the world to express solidarity with Israel or to condemn its punishing military response in the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians to date.
Few matters are able to rile global publics quite like war in Israel-Palestine. Following Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which left more than 1,200 dead, people have taken to the streets around the world to express solidarity with Israel or to condemn its punishing military response in the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians to date.
The war has significantly raised tensions in the Middle East, with the battlefield already having expanded to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and the Red Sea. Beyond the Middle East, the conflict’s ripple effects have been felt around the world, leading to pitched battles over freedom of speech, intense diplomatic wrangling at the United Nations, and a surge in hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and Arabs.
This all comes as some 40 percent of the world’s population is set to go to the polls this year in more than 40 countries. And in several of them, the Israel-Hamas war is creating or exacerbating political rifts that could have real electoral consequences. Here is a look at how the conflict could echo through world politics in the coming year.
Outside of Israel itself, the war’s political repercussions will likely be most keenly felt in the United States, where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a foreign-policy issue of singular importance to voters. President Joe Biden has resolutely stood by Israel since the Oct. 7 attack, rushing additional U.S. military aid to the country to bolster its Iron Dome missile defenses, pushing Congress to pass a substantial aid package for Israel, and exercising the U.S. veto to block a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.
As criticism has grown both internationally and from within his own party over Israel’s conduct in the war and the staggering civilian death toll, Biden has taken a tougher stance on what he has described as Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza, but he has steadfastly refused to attach conditions on U.S. military aid to the country as a means to alter its tactics.
Growing up in the wake of the Holocaust, Biden’s support for Israel is personal and deeply rooted. He has described himself as a “Zionist in my heart.” But he presides over a country and a party deeply divided over how to respond to the war. The Democratic Party’s once-unwavering support for Israel has increasingly been called into question by its progressive flank.
Amid the electorate at large, the picture is equally complicated. A New York Times/Siena College........