Why is risk-averse Joe Biden gambling on such a high-stakes visit to Israel?

The matter-of-fact announcement, that the president of the United States had arrived in Tel Aviv to a warm welcome from the prime minister of Israel, presents as normal and routine something that is about as far from routine as it is possible to be.

Joe Biden’s visit, unveiled barely 24 hours beforehand, takes him into a diplomatic and security situation that is both highly uncertain and dangerous. It is an extraordinary undertaking for any US president, and risky in the extreme.

Precisely how risky became apparent even as Biden was preparing to leave Washington on board Air Force One, with the news breaking from Gaza, closely followed by angry accusations and disclaimers, that the main hospital in Gaza City had been hit by a missile, leaving hundreds dead and still more injured. The hospital was also providing refuge for Gazans ordered to evacuate or fleeing homes already destroyed by Israeli fire.

The truth of what happened – whether the missile was deliberately fired, as Hamas claims, by Israel, in defiance of international rules of war outlawing attacks on civilian institutions, such as hospitals; or whether, as Israel’s early official account has it, the hospital was struck by a Hamas missile intended for Israel that went astray – remains unresolved at the time of writing.

But another fire had been lit in the multiple tinderboxes in and around Gaza, with protests erupting in the occupied West Bank, and across much of the Middle East, from Beirut to Tehran.

Meanwhile, crowds of Gaza residents continued to flock to the still-closed Rafah crossing point into Egypt. Armed skirmishes went on between Israel and Hezbollah forces on the border with Lebanon, and Israel showed no sign of scaling back its military preparations for the threatened ground assault on Gaza, intended, as Benjamin Netanyahu put it, to “demolish” Hamas as a force once and for all. True, the assault was not actually launched, and Israel loosened its siege in a few, very small ways, with the limited provision of water and fuel. But any minor de-escalation was instantly negated by the carnage at the Gaza City hospital.

It hardly needs to be said that these are not the circumstances into which an American president would usually fly. The security arrangements that attend a US leader on his travels inside, but still more outside the United States, are second to none in the world; presidents usually travel, especially this sort of distance, only when any physical dangers are past and the diplomacy has been settled. The role of the top man is to shake hands on arrival, sign the historic documents agreed by others, pose for the photos, and return home as the peacemaker-in-chief.

This trip, even before the Gaza hospital bombing, looked as though the United States was deploying its queen on the diplomatic chessboard as an opening gambit, rather than the final ambush.

All of which poses the question: why? Why did President Biden embark on a last-minute venture that would appear so alien to his risk-averse and, at times, even doddery image?

In some ways, his decision to travel to the Middle East in person seems more akin to the maverick use of the presidential office by Donald Trump in defiance of conventional diplomacy – Trump’s summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, for instance, or the infamous (to many) Helsinki meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Could Biden perhaps be taking a leaf out of Trump’s playbook with a view to the incipient election campaign? It is highly doubtful that this would be the main motive but it could have been seen as offering a contributory benefit – in the event, of course, of success. But it is not at all clear what would constitute success because the objectives of the visit were – at least for public consumption – unclear.

Biden has, it is true, been more cautious than Trump often appeared to be; his path was cleared by a week of old-fashioned shuttle diplomacy by his secretary of state, Antony Blinken. Or it was supposed to have been cleared: the hospital bombing led to the cancellation of a planned four-power summit with the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and Egypt, as one after the other the leaders backed out.

Biden has been left with what looks like little more than a crisis bilateral between the United States and its Israeli ally. This is not, it is worth repeating, what US presidents usually do. Overseas visits, even last-minute ones, are not supposed to leave room for surprises.

And there was speculation, even as Biden’s plane was prepared, that his trip could be called off. That it was not testifies to how high the stakes, and how grave the dangers, are seen to be in Washington – and particularly, perhaps, in the White House only a little more than a year out from the presidential election.

The mass killings carried out by Hamas, with a brutality rarely seen in conventional war, brought to an abrupt end not just Israelis’ sense of their own security but the semblance of stability, albeit fragile stability, that prevailed over much of the Middle East. The 2020 Abraham accords – brokered, incidentally, by Trump – had facilitated a series of rapprochements across the region, appearing to reduce the risk of future conflict. As it turns out, the growing sense of security was false.

It is hard to see what Biden can bring back from what has to be only a flying visit. Will he perhaps persuade Israel to relax its siege on Gaza in the name of averting the humanitarian catastrophe that looms, or offer some incentive for Egypt to open its border with Gaza, even temporarily? Might he try to convince Netanyahu to call off any ground operations against Gaza, argue for more time and advise on particular concessions that might be made to save as many Israeli hostages as may still be alive?

Any one of these could be counted as an achievement – but how feasible any of this would be is another matter. Netanyahu has an angry and newly insecure population to placate, many of whom demand revenge for the Israeli lives lost. Against that, from the US and broader international perspective, must be set the risks of a conflagration that could consume the whole region, involving Iran and maybe threatening the very survival of Israel itself.

It may be hazarded that it is in a desperate attempt to avert such a conflagration that President Biden took the decision to travel halfway around the world. It can be seen as a brave or a foolhardy move, that may not succeed and could jeopardise his prospects for a second term.

What happens next will be a test of the power of the US presidency, a test of the resilience of the state of Israel, and a test of the determination on the part of a new generation of Palestinians and other have-nots across the region to right what they see as historic wrongs.

What was unleashed in the Hamas attacks 10 days ago is not over yet.