Joe Biden must finally put the lives of people on both sides of the Israel-Hamas war ahead of support for any state working against their best interest

Massive military funding would be better spent protecting security and self-determination of both Israeli and Palestinian people

Palestinians sit at the rubble of a residential building destroyed by Israeli strikes in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters

Anne-Marie Slaughter
© Washington Post

The Biden administration must do whatever it can to protect the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. It must also do whatever it can to protect Israelis. That means both pausing military assistance to the Israeli government until Palestinian civilians in Gaza have sufficient food, water, medicine and shelter to survive the war, and guaranteeing the Israeli people that the United States and its allies will do all they can to protect them from further attack.

The key to this dual policy is focusing on the lives of the people on both sides rather than on supporting or withdrawing support for a state. Will Israel survive as a Jewish state? Will the Palestinian people get their own state? Government officials and foreign policy experts operate within an international system composed of states and, thus, typically focus on governments rather than people.