The Bottom Line

In this episode, Annelle Sheline tells host Steve Clemons that the contradictions in US policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza made her job as a State Department officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor “so difficult”. Sheline announced her resignation publicly on March 27.And Khaled Elgindy, a political scientist at the Middle East Institute, argues that US President Joe Biden is a big factor in the country’s stagnant policy toward Israel – supporting the war, with some alleviation of the humanitarian crisis. “Most people in the administration have probably moved on in their thinking,” Elgindy says.

The Biden administration has fallen into a predictable pattern on Gaza, according to Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch: Talk about concern for civilian casualties, but undercut any pressure on Israel to stop the war.Roth tells host Steve Clemons that US President Joe Biden is engaging in “cynical” election politics by refusing to enforce the UN resolution calling for a ceasefire, or the World Court ruling ordering Israel to allow more food into Gaza, where starvation and disease are spreading because of Israeli measures.US disregard for international law will have far-reaching consequences, says Roth.

All of Israel’s modern wars have ended with US intervention, but the current war in Gaza has gone on for half a year because “Biden is a slow learner”, argues University of Pennsylvania political scientist Ian Lustick.Israel needs an outside power to blame when it cannot achieve its aims. “That's because the war aims are fundamentally political, and the military cannot achieve them,” says Lustick.Lustick and Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti talk to host Steve Clemons about the current situation on the ground and the debate within the Democratic Party in the United States.Subscribe to our channel http://bit.ly/AJSubscribeFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/AJEnglishFind us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/aljazeeraCheck our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/Check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/aljazeeraenglish/Download AJE Mobile App: https://aje.io/AJEMobile@AljazeeraEnglish#Aljazeeraenglish#News

“Does the United States want to be complicit in genocide?” This is the question that US leaders should be asking themselves as Israel’s war on Gaza continues, argues Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs.Sachs tells host Steve Clemons that Israel could not continue “for one day” without US support, and the rhetoric from top Democrats criticising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “meaningless” because no action is taken to stop the war crimes.This has led to US isolation on the world stage, as Israel is allowed to continue “whatever they have in their minds… which will never lead to peace”.Subscribe to our channel http://bit.ly/AJSubscribeFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/AJEnglishFind us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/aljazeeraCheck our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/Check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/aljazeeraenglish/Download AJE Mobile App: https://aje.io/AJEMobile@AljazeeraEnglish#Aljazeeraenglish#News

US Senator Chris Van Hollen says it is time for the Biden administration to tell Israel, “If you continue to ignore us, there will be consequences.”Senator Van Hollen, who is one of seven senators (out of 100) to have called for a permanent ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, tells host Steve Clemons that Hamas’s surprise attack last year “does not justify the humanitarian catastrophe that we’re witnessing in Gaza”.The Democratic senator from Maryland said that the United States has to use “all the levers of our power and influence” to allow more aid to get to starving Palestinians.

US policy on Israel “looks incoherent because it is incoherent,” argues Matt Duss, former adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, and this is making the United States look “feckless and weak”.Duss tells host Steve Clemons that Israel is violating US law by using US-supplied weapons while preventing humanitarian aid. But President Joe Biden “has simply taken the tools of leverage off the table”.Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, says there are still no indications that the Abandon Biden movement within the Democratic Party, nor Israel’s war crimes, will lead to a shift in course anytime soon.Subscribe to our channel http://bit.ly/AJSubscribeFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/AJEnglishFind us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/aljazeeraCheck our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/Check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/aljazeeraenglish/Download AJE Mobile App: https://aje.io/AJEMobile@AljazeeraEnglish#Aljazeeraenglish#News

The Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis was the last big medical facility in the Gaza Strip destroyed by Israel’s war.The World Health Organization says Israel killed 627 doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and other healthcare workers between October and January.With almost no supplies entering Gaza, what is next for the 2.3 million Palestinians forced to live in inhuman conditions?Host Steve Clemons speaks with Dr Thaer Ahmad, an emergency room physician in Chicago who recently returned from volunteering at Nasser Hospital; and with Dr Muaiad Kittaneh, a haematologist/oncologist who co-founded the Palestinian-American Medical Association.

About 20 countries have announced suspension of funding to UNRWA, the agency that has been providing services to Palestinian refugees since 1950.The official reason for the suspension was Israel’s accusation that a dozen UNRWA employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks.To understand the potential consequences of undermining UNRWA – especially amid a humanitarian catastrophe – host Steve Clemons speaks with Leila Hilal, a former adviser to the UNRWA commissioner-general, and Anne Irfan, lecturer at University College London and author of Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System.

The United States' support for Israel’s war on Gaza makes the country look ineffectual and hypocritical to the rest of the world, according to Harvard University professor Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.Walt tells host Steve Clemons that Israel and the US-Israel relationship have changed over the decades, but US President Joe Biden is holding on to a view of Israel formed in the West in the 1970s.By rejecting a ceasefire, the US looks like it "encourages conflict" instead of being a peacemaker, Walt argues, especially since Israel has no political strategy for resolving the Palestinian question.

American voters feel “impotent and hopeless” as they approach an election where the main choices are a “neo-fascist Pied Piper” (Donald Trump) or “the war criminals of the Democratic Party”, argues independent presidential candidate Cornel West.West, one of the United States’s pre-eminent philosophers and justice activists, tells host Steve Clemons that President Joe Biden is enabling Israeli genocide and that Israel cannot be secure if “precious Jewish security and safety is predicated on the domination of precious Palestinians”.West argues that recent talk of a two-state solution is “subterfuge – a refusal to deal with the 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank”.