The only thing more use­less than an oppor­tu­ni­ty not seized is an obvi­ous les­son not learned. The Biden administration’s “plan” to deliv­er aid to Gaza with­out putting boots on the ground has man­aged both at the same time.

A tem­po­rary bridge that will take up to 60 days to build and offers noth­ing beyond mak­ing it pos­si­ble (maybe) to get food aid onto the beach, is lit­tle bet­ter than a feel-good measure.
“Boots on the beach”, how­ev­er, would be an indis­putably pos­i­tive response to the expo­nen­tial­ly grow­ing suf­fer­ing of the peo­ple of Gaza.
The very thought may be an anath­e­ma to many politi­cians, but a phys­i­cal pres­ence in the mid­dle of a human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis is a win-win. The best exam­ple I’ve ever seen was when Kurds fled into Turkey and Iran in 1991 to escape Sad­dam Hussein’s revenge, after the George H.W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion cow­ered back from stop­ping him.
As part of “Oper­a­tion Pro­vide Com­fort”, a UN-man­dat­ed effort to estab­lish a “safe haven “ for the Kurds in north­ern Iraq, six hulk­ing U.S. Army Green Berets showed up on a mud­dy Turk­ish moun­tain­side tableau of mis­ery called Ishikverin. Thou­sands of refugees were strand­ed there, just below the snowline.
As are the Israelis in Gaza, the Turks were doing their best to keep con­di­tions wretched and  human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance minimal.
With­in twen­ty-four hours of their arrival, the Amer­i­can sol­diers were trans­form­ing a hell-hole into a place where peo­ple had hope they might sur­vive long enough to go home. Trans­la­tors were recruit­ed, work teams orga­nized accord­ing to skill sets. Latrines were dug, rub­bish cleared up, order estab­lished in what had been a chaot­ic line at a mobile clin­ic run by Doc­tors With­out Borders.
The Green Berets told us they’d made it clear that any Turk­ish sol­diers who beat or shot refugees (which we’d seen and report­ed them doing) “would get the same back”.

                        SET THE RULES

“Force pro­tec­tion” being a U.S. mil­i­tary mantra, both the Israelis and Hamas would need to  be told in sim­i­lar clear and unequiv­o­cal terms that  inter­fer­ence with U.S. troops and aid work­ers involved in food dis­tri­b­u­tion for Gaza would not be tol­er­at­ed, with appro­pri­ate Rules of Engage­ment, both polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary, to back it up.
And Israel has giv­en de fac­to clear­ance already.
Leav­ing aside what­ev­er Israel’s legal oblig­a­tions are in Gaza, the West has repeat­ed­ly shown it is will­ing to take the Israeli gov­ern­ment at its word even when it’s obvi­ous they are being eco­nom­i­cal with the truth, to put it mildly.
At the begin­ning of the con­flict Israeli Defense Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant assert­ed that after the con­flict, Israel would “no longer have respon­si­bil­i­ty for life in the Gaza Strip”.
Ergo, the U.S. and any of its part­ners and allies facil­i­tat­ing aid dis­tri­b­u­tion could arguably be seen as mere­ly help­ing Israel achieve one of its stat­ed aims. That is, of course, simplistic.
But how much has nit-pick­ing legal nuances achieved?

                             HISTORY SHOWS…

The les­son unlearned is from the Marine’s role in the multi­na­tion­al force in Beirut in 1983.
They were hun­kered down, guns point­ed out, in the trashed inter­na­tion­al air­port. Con­tact with the local pop­u­la­tion they were there to ben­e­fit was lim­it­ed and wary.
A small con­tin­gent of Ital­ian troops took on the job of pro­tect­ing the Pales­tin­ian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatil­la, scene of a mas­sacre by a Lebanese Chrisi­tan mili­tia allied with Israel.
Cam­era crew Sami Awad and Has­san Harake and I were at a check­point where two Ital­ian sol­diers were post­ed to ensure no weapons entered the camp when, for no appar­ent rea­son, Chris­t­ian mili­ti­a­men start­ed tak­ing pot shots at it with an anti-air­craft gun. We all ducked for cov­er behind a sand berm. Rounds slammed into and whizzed over it.
But when a car drove up, one of the Ital­ians jumped out, searched it and con­fis­cat­ed a pis­tol. (So much for the joke about Ital­ian tanks hav­ing one for­ward and three reverse gears.)
I’ve often tried to imag­ine how dif­fer­ent the Mid­dle East, and America’s rela­tions with it, would be today if it had been U.S. Marines ensur­ing the safe­ty of Pales­tin­ian refugees. It’s an image even the most rabid Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist move­ment, preach­ing hatred of “evil Amer­i­ca”, would have a hard time dispelling.
Dis­trib­ut­ing aid on the ground sends an equal­ly vivid mes­sage that Hamas is not the peo­ple of Gaza’s best friend.
Leav­ing aside the human­i­tar­i­an impact, isn’t that les­son enough for putting U.S. boots on a Gaza beach to super­vise and pro­tect say, Marine hov­er­craft, known as LCACs (Land­ing Craft, Air Cush­ion) roar­ing ashore filled to their 60 tonne car­ry­ing capac­i­ty with food aid?
The optics alone would go some way to aton­ing for con­tin­u­ing to sup­ply arms to Israel with­out real con­straints on their use in civil­ian areas.
Unfor­tu­nate­ly for some two mil­lion civil­ians trapped in Gaza, and the image of Amer­i­ca, the more like­ly prospect is that rather than  embrac­ing “Star Trek” Com­man­der Picard’s catch­line, “Make it so”, those who could do so fit the great Amer­i­can writer Mark Twain’s wry self-assess­ment: “I was sel­dom able to see an oppor­tu­ni­ty until it had ceased to be one.”
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