The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, arrived in Israel on Tuesday to ostensibly plead with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to accept a ceasefire in Gaza and end a widening regional war. Blinken and other US officials have made this appeal many times in recent months, only to be ignored by the Israeli premier, who has instead set about destroying swaths of Lebanon. On this visit, Blinken urged Netanyahu to use the recent killing of Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, in Gaza as an opening to declare victory and wind down Israel’s war.
Sinwar’s killing, in a surprise encounter with Israeli troops last week, should have created new momentum for a ceasefire agreement that would lead to a regional de-escalation and the release of dozens of hostages still being held by Hamas after its 7 October attack on Israel. But Joe Biden has already squandered this opportunity by sending Blinken to deliver a weak lecture to Netanyahu, and refusing to pressure Israel to accept a truce.
Netanyahu won’t “take the win” provided by Sinwar’s death because, for the past year, Biden has shown that he will rush to defend Israel from the consequences of its catastrophic war on Gaza, and its reckless actions across the region. Biden refuses to impose any costs on Netanyahu and his rightwing government. The US has provided $22bn in weapons and other military support, along with diplomatic cover at the UN security council, that enabled Israel to continue its onslaught in Gaza despite the harrowing death toll, and, more recently, to replicate those tactics in Lebanon.
Both Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, cheered Sinwar’s killing and urged Israel to use it as an opening to end the war. Biden called the Hamas leader “an insurmountable obstacle” to reaching a political settlement in Gaza. But Biden glossed over the fact that, for months, Netanyahu also blocked a ceasefire by backpedaling and adding new conditions – to the point that some of Israel’s top security officials accused him of sabotaging the negotiations to avoid the collapse of his extremist governing coalition.
Since the US administration can no longer point to Sinwar as the main obstacle to ending the conflict, will Biden finally shame Netanyahu for his role in obstructing a deal – or withhold shipments of offensive weapons to Israel? If only. All signs point to Biden continuing his failed policy of complaining about Netanyahu’s intransigence, but refusing to use an ounce of US leverage to stop him from expanding the war.
Over the past month, Israel has launched intense airstrikes and a ground invasion of Lebanon, killing thousands and displacing more than 1 million people. The Israeli military has also bombed Syria and Yemen, and unleashed a major attack on northern Gaza. And Netanyahu’s government is vowing to retaliate for a barrage of more than 180 ballistic missiles that Iran fired against Israel on 1 October – itself an act of reprisal by Iran for Israel’s assassination of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in July, and the killing of Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut last month.
As long as Israel receives a virtually unlimited supply of arms and other military support from the US – and can be shielded from the costs of its escalation – Netanyahu has little incentive to stop taking greater risks that threaten to engulf the Middle East in a devastating war. In the latest example of Biden emboldening Israel to take more risks, Washington announced on 13 October that it was deploying one of its most advanced missile defense systems to Israel, along with about 100 US troops who will help operate it. While the system is defensive – designed to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles – it could encourage Netanyahu’s government to carry out more severe retaliation against Iran, knowing that the US will always protect Israel from the consequences of its adventurism.
While the Biden administration has tried to convince Netanyahu to avoid targeting Iran’s oil production or nuclear enrichment sites, which could trigger an Iranian response and spiral into a wider confrontation, some Israeli officials are hinting at a large-scale attack. On Wednesday, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, told troops that airstrikes on Iran would make the world understand Israel’s “military might”.
In turn, Tehran would be more likely to retaliate for an Israeli attack that targets Iran’s oil infrastructure, risking a direct conflict between the US and Iran. One danger is that Iranian missiles could kill or injure US troops that are now deployed in Israel to operate the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad.
In recent months, Israel scored a series of tactical victories against Iran and its network of allied militias in the so-called “axis of resistance”, which has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and US troops in the region. Israel assassinated a string of top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, and also attacked the Houthi militia in Yemen as well as Syrian government troops. Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim militia founded in the 1980s to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, has grown into the world’s most heavily armed non-state group and the most powerful political force in Lebanon. Over the past month, Israel killed most of Hezbollah’s top leadership and destroyed a significant portion of its arsenal of more than 100,000 missiles and rockets.
Tehran and its allies are looking for a way out of a conflict that has proven increasingly costly and destructive, against a far superior Israeli military backed by Washington. All of Iran’s allies have made clear that they would stand down once Hamas and Israel agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. Iran’s leaders are particularly eager to stem the damage to Hezbollah, a group they have spent decades funding and training so that it could serve as a deterrent to potential Israeli attacks on Iran.
At this point, all the major players want the war to end – except for Netanyahu and his rightwing government, who see an opportunity to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, and weaken Iran. “We are changing the strategic reality in the Middle East,” Netanyahu declared last month, after ordering the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader. His comment echoed the boastful rhetoric of the George W Bush administration after the US invaded Iraq in 2003, and before it got bogged down fighting a long insurgency.
While Netanyahu has lofty ambitions to reshape the Middle East, he’s had little to say about Israel’s postwar plans for Gaza. In fact, the Israeli premier has defied international and domestic pressure to outline an end game beyond seeking a “total victory” against Hamas.
This is another way that Biden’s unwavering support emboldens Netanyahu to prolong the conflict and prioritize his own political survival. The prime minister has spent most of his career helping expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and resisting a two-state solution to end the occupation of Palestinian territories. Today, extremist members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition and his own Likud party openly call for the de facto expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, followed by the establishment of Jewish settlements in the territory.
After Israel announced it had killed Sinwar last week, Harris declared at a campaign event that “it is time for the day after to begin” in Gaza. But Netanyahu – abetted by Biden’s blank check and US complicity – has done everything possible to avoid a postwar reckoning for what Israel has wreaked in Gaza and the Middle East.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University. He is also a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn)
