President Biden’s state department, frantically attempting to mediate disputes on the eve of his trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel, has been seeking to satisfy all sides but ending up harming Israel’s interests.  

The department announced today its findings on the death of an Al Jazeera journalist, Shirin Abu Akleh. The television reporter, an American citizen, was killed on May 11 while covering a firefight at Jenin between the Israeli Defense Force and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which America lists as a terrorist organization. 

A state department statement echoes prior press reporting based on circumstantial evidence by the likes of CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Hedging its bets, the state department concluded that Israel was “likely” responsible for Abu Akleh’s death. It also “found no reason to believe” the killing was intentional. 

The announcement was widely seen in Israel as an attempt to clean the slate — at Israel’s expense — prior to Mr. Biden’s arrival at Ben Gurion Airport on July 13. Abu Akleh’s death has been heavily covered in foreign news sections in the press and has dominated the questioning at the state department’s briefings. The White House is likely hoping that today’s statement will clear the issue.

A forensic examination found the bullet that killed Abu Akleh was too damaged to conclusively attach culpability. By speculating that Israel did it anyway, Washington hoped to satisfy the Palestinians. The IDF, meanwhile, surely would praise the state department’s nod toward the notion that its soldiers don’t deliberately target journalists.

Alas, cutting the baby in half that way satisfies no one. The state department “took the middle road, and ended up antagonizing everybody,” a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, told the Sun. 

Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, said that regardless of the statement, the Israeli investigation would continue. In the Jenin battle, he stressed, the IDF elite units shot “only in the direction of the sources of the shooting” against them. 

Ramallah contends that “Israel killed Shireen Abu Akleh and it has to be held responsible for the crime it has committed,” as a Palestine Liberation Organization official, Wasel Abu Youssef, told Reuters. Washington knows the truth, he added, but “continues to stall in announcing it.”

As members of the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Blinken and the ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfiled, constantly highlighted Abu Akleh’s case, doubts about Israel’s commitment to press freedoms kept mounting. 

More than 2,600 journalists have been killed covering battles since 1990. According to Mr. Oren, some 700 of them were American, and Al Jazeera suffered 11 such casualties. “No one is investigating any of this,” he says, while the IDF is endlessly scrutinized in “massive investigations” that “single out Israel.”

The Abu Akleh case is complicating Mr. Biden’s Mideast trip, as is another issue that flared up over the weekend.  On Saturday Israel intercepted three Hezbollah drones flying in the direction of a gas-exploration rig in the Mediterranean. The rig, known as Karish — Hebrew for Shark — is likely to yield billions of dollars worth of gas, turning Israel into a major energy exporter. 

Gas explorations in the Karish area started by Israeli and American companies eight years ago. In 2020 Beirut contended that the area was in Lebanon’s maritime economic zone — even as a decade earlier it had conceded that it was on the Israeli side of the border. Beirut redrew the map, demanding to expand its maritime jurisdiction by 560 square miles, including the lucrative gas area. 

Hezbollah, the ultimate power in Beirut politics, “must maintain its self-declared status as defender of Lebanon,” a researcher at Alma, a northern Israel-based think tank that follows Lebanon and Syria, Tal Beeri, told the Sun. “The best way to do that is by frequently raising new controversies.” 

Lebanon’s failure to find energy resources on its side of the Mediterranean sharply contrasts with Israel’s successful gas explorations. That explains Hezbollah’s maritime aggression. Ever-shifting border disputes have long helped to justify its attacks against Israel. 

What is less clear is why an American state department mediator, Amos Hochstein, keeps shuttling between Beirut and Jerusleam in an attempt to mediate between Israel and Hezbollah, an organization that tops the department’s terror organization list.

Washington’s clumsy attempts at resolving disputes are harming a Mideast ally. During his trip, Mr. Biden must also try to satisfy, on the one hand, his Democratic left flank and, on the other hand, Israeli politicians. That is turning out to be tricky as well.

“Visiting Palestinians in East Jerusalem may help Biden with the progressive left, but it would hurt Yair Lapid,” Mr. Oren says. He was referring to the Washington-favored center-left acting prime minister, who is running against a former premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Israel’s November 1 election. 

Mr. Biden’s mid-July trip is fraught with such pitfalls. His attempt to take the middle of the road on all of them has so far put him in a position to be hit by traffic from both  sides.