A few months ago, Joe Biden — before the election — said Barack Obama would surely be tested by the international community. Biden, like most Americans, probably believed such a test would come in the form of terrorism at home or a decay in the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Yet such a test has not come. Instead, just after Christmas, a recurring international issue put itself back on the world’s agenda. The Arab-Israeli conflict regained prominence as Israel rocketed the Gaza Strip and has continued to for the past two weeks.

The situation is clearly not as much of a direct a test for Obama as terrorism would have been. However, it is clear the United States has had, and will continue to have, a larger interest in Israel and its actions than any other country.

Obama, then, can and should take a stand in the conflict. Though the United States, rife with pro-Israel Jews and pro-Israel lobbying groups, definitely has reason to support Israel, it also has a higher reason, as a world leader, to seek peaceful compromise in the world when two sides both have meaningful, rightful and historical — yet divergent — interests. Former president Bill Clinton displayed this understanding at the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David in 2000, and President Bush also displayed it at the Middle East peace conference at Annapolis in 2007.

However, these late-term attempts clearly and unfortunately did not lead to any long-term or meaningful progress ­— the current situation proving this more than ever.

So Obama could and will attempt another peace conference in the future. And maybe they, unlike their predecessors, will somehow live up to the Obama-and-cabinet hype by actually bringing compromise and a long-lasting solution to this historical dilemma.

Until that time, however, Obama can and should at least address the current situation by calling on Israel to halt any and all attacks on U.N.-affiliated individuals. Whether purposely or not, Israel shelled a U.N. school in Gaza just a week ago, killing nearly forty people. More recently, a U.N.-flagged food delivery truck was hit by Israel during the agreed-upon three-hour cease-fire, killing the driver and injuring many others.

In response, Chris Gunness, of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said “The U.N. is suspending its aid operations in Gaza until we can get safety and security guarantees for our staff. We’ve been coordinating with [Israeli forces] and yet our staff continue to be hit and killed.”

Regardless of the country involved, this cannot be tolerated by the international community, and above all by the United States. 750,000 Gaza residents, half of the area’s total population, rely on the U.N. for food and health care. Wartime or not, their lives depend on the U.N.

While half of the roughly 700 Palestinians killed during the last two weeks were civilians, and such deaths are essentially impossible to prevent when militants dwell among them, the United Nations’ potential to help innocents stay alive during war can be and must be protected.

History has shown that an organization such as the United Nations can not stop all wars or always keep peace, but it can serve to offer the affected innocents a better chance at survival than they otherwise would have.

So although it seems unlikely that Obama will be able to live up to our ridiculously high international expectations for him by leading the creation of a better U.N. or achieving world peace himself, he can at least speak up now.

He may not be our official president yet and undoubtedly will not be able to prevent Arabs and Israelis from incessantly killing each other over a few square miles of sand, but he can at least open his mouth in the defense of humanitarianism.

The Hawaiian vacation is over.

– Steve Adams is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Maryland.