US President Joe Biden’s chief diplomat’s latest effort to persuade Israel to change its war tactics in Gaza and its long-range goals for pacifying the Palestinians has failed.
Biden and his advisors have apparently underestimated the rage among the Israeli public over the October 7 assault of southern Israel by terrorists affiliated with Hamas, the Islamic guerrilla group that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007.
They have also failed to foresee it would take more than public exhortations to reach a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is perhaps more than ever a source of death, destruction and bitterness.
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have decided that taking a hard line on both immediate war tactics and long-range diplomatic strategy are both militarily prudent and politically advantageous.
Even open US criticism of the Israeli government, usually enough to at least produce Israeli lip service to US desires, seems to be having little effect on Netanyahu and the Israeli public that largely supports his scorched earth war strategy.
This week’s visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Tel Aviv produced almost no signs of an Israeli willingness to bend to Washington’s will.
Blinken, on his fourth Middle East tour since the Gaza war began, obtained only a go-ahead from Israel to permit UN inspectors to visit the northern Gaza Strip to assess humanitarian needs when and if Palestinian residents return. Even that apparent agreement included no timetable.
An Israeli pledge to use surgical rather than widespread bombardments of Gaza to rout Hamas has not reduced the death toll of civilians or damage to infrastructure.
Blinken’s announced primary goal was to inhibit the war’s spread beyond Gaza. Tit-for-tat artillery and missile assaults between the Israelis and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have continued alongside the Gaza war.
Israel upped the ante by assassinating a Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon shortly after the assassination-by-drone attack of a Hamas official in Beirut. In retaliation, Hezbollah struck a town several miles inside Israel with a missile, its deepest such penetration.
Meanwhile, the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen is violently disrupting international shipping in the Red Sea. It has forced to US and Great Britain to try to defend the commercial cargo route into the Mediterranean with fire from jet fighters and sea-borne weaponry to destroy drones and rockets.
Blinken had also pressed Israel to agree to negotiations that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank – the so-called two-state solution. Netanyahu and his coalition partners refuse to entertain such an outcome.
Blinken reportedly dangled the larger benefit to Israel of a comprehensive settlement of Middle East conflicts. With a move toward the creation of a Palestinian state, Arab countries would conceivably cooperate in forging a quasi-alliance with the US and Israel against threats emanating from Iran.
“If Israel wants its Arab neighbors to make the tough decisions necessary to help ensure lasting security, Israel’s leadership will have to make hard decisions themselves,” Blinken said. “Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves.”
Netanyahu’s vision of the benefits of a wider peace is more limited. He is wedded to tinkering with security arrangements in and around the Gaza Strip to ensure no Palestinian armed group can ever again emerge to threaten Israel.
Chief allies of his right-wing government go further: they propose the removal of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the coastal enclave to other countries.
Israel has publicly said it wants thousands of Palestinians to receive refuge in Egypt and Jordan and is trying to persuade the European Union’s 27 members each to accept ten thousand Palestinian refugees or somehow get the Democratic Republic of Congo to admit thousands and convince the Palestinians to move there.
Blinken insisted that Netanyahu had assured him that “evictions” are “not the policy of the Israeli government.” Yet, Danny Danon, a member of parliament from Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians was a solution to the Gaza violence.
His comments were the latest of several similar suggestions made by Israeli politicians since October 7, when marauding Hamas members broke through the security fence along Gaza’s borders and massacred around 1,200 Israeli civilians.
“What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich two weeks ago. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different.”
During his barnstorming Middle East trip, Blinken visited Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the West Bank, which is governed in part by the Palestinian Authority. The PA is a rival of Hamas, which has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007.
Biden has tried to frame current US policy in terms of supporting Israel’s right to self-defense as well as limiting the killing of Palestinian civilians as a byproduct of the war. But this diplomatic straddling seems to have pleased neither side.
Some 57% of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip supported Hamas’ war effort, along with 82% in the West Bank, according to a Palestinian survey taken last month.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu seems to have the backing of most Israelis for his tough war goals. A recent survey conducted in Israel showed more than 80% of Israelis support the government’s current offensive.