THREAD: I’ve been making the argument that the ongoing negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire are a diversionary US-Israeli charade and shouldn’t be taken particularly seriously. Initially, their primary purpose was to serve as a fig leaf for Israel to continue with its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip. In other words, their purpose is process, and their objective has therefore been to avoid reaching a ceasefire agreement rather than concluding one.
An Oslo process for genocide, if you will. Just as Oslo served as the essential fig leaf enabling Israel to intensify settlement expansion and annexationist policies, while Washington ran interference for Israel with a “peace process” designed to go nowhere, so with these ceasefire negotiations that commenced many months ago.
For those who may not recall the 1990s, Washington typically rebuffed international criticism of Israeli policy with the argument that its “peace process” would resolve the matter at hand, and efforts to hold Israel accountable for its actions would derail diplomacy.
The latest ceasefire negotiations have a more specific purpose than buying time for Israel to snatch an unattainable military victory from the closing jaws of failure. And this is to forestall, and failing that to minimize to the extent possible, any retaliation by Iran, Hizballah, and their coalition partners for Israel’s recent spate of assassinations and bombings in the region.
Washington’s position is that neither Iran, nor Lebanon, nor indeed any other state in the region has a right to defend itself against Israeli attack, or any right to respond to Israeli attack. Pursuant to the rules-based international order Israel by contrast has not only a right to be protected from retaliation or any other repercussion resulting from its actions, but also the right to respond, as it sees fit, to any reprisals provoked by its actions.
As I’ve noted previously, perhaps the only consistent US position since 7 October has been its opposition to regional escalation beyond Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Washington’s problem is that it has consistently declined to use either its influence or power to prevent such escalation. And when it has, this has been ineffective.
There have only been two exceptions thus far: in early October, Israel was reportedly on the verge of launching a massive attack against Lebanon to strike a blow against the Hizballah movement. US President Joe Biden, recognizing Israel would be biting off far more than it was in a position to chew, counseled Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against doing so, and the latter immediately called it off. It took only a phone call.
About a month later, a series of powerful US air raids against militias in Iraq that had been firing increasingly lethal drones and missiles at Israel as well as US bases in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, led these groups to announce a cessation of attacks against US facilities. Their attacks against Israel however continued, and they have more recently also resumed shelling US forces.
By contrast Operation Prosperity Guardian, consisting of a US-UK naval task force conducting regular air raids on Yemen to deter its Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, from attacking shipping seeking to enter the Red Sea, has been an abject failure. The attacks have continued, shipping continues to avoid the Suez Canal, and the Israeli port of Eilat recently declared bankruptcy.
Similarly, the deployment of two US aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean in October to deter Hizballah from maintaining its “support front” in southern Lebanon failed to make an impression on the Lebanese movement.
The primary reason for US failure has been Washington’s unwillingness to use its influence with Israel to end its genocidal campaign against Israel in order end the activities of the various support fronts, or to commit the blood and treasure that would be required to terminate these support fronts itself. That’s of course assuming the US can succeed where Israel has failed, and that US counter-insurgency has improved by leaps and bounds since the failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The main challenge to current US efforts to prevent further regional escalation are the vows of Hizballah and Iran to retaliate against Israel independently of developments in the Gaza Strip. Whether, when, where, and how they will respond is at best speculation. It could consist of anything from a coordinated attack against Israel, to a single high-profile operation, to Tehran crossing the nuclear threshold.
Washington is taking these threats sufficiently seriously that it believes ceasefire negotiations will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Israel’s adversaries to retaliate if in so doing they end up saddled with responsibility for derailing an initiative to end the war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. That’s pretty much the sole reason the negotiations resumed with such fanfare this week.
However unlikely, it’s not inconceivable that Israel’s adversaries have either decided not to respond, or postponed their response indefinitely. It may also be the case that they have not responded because they are still preparing their reprisals. But the most plausible explanation is that Biden for once read the room correctly, and the anticipated response was postponed to determine if Washington was finally prepared rein in its Israeli proxy and end the latter’s genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip.
The herd of elephants in the negotiating chamber is of course Israel, and specifically Netanyahu. As even his own defense minister and the negotiators the Israeli prime minister has personally appointed have now made clear, the Israeli prime minister does not want a deal and is the obstacle to one being concluded, to the extent that he has sabotaged the US initiative that according to Biden was formulated not in Washington but by Netanyahu himself.
Initially convinced that Hamas would reject it, Netanyahu was blindsided when the Palestinians on 2 July announced their acceptance. Netanyahu responded by adding new conditions that had not been part of his initiative announced by Biden.
To square this circle, and amid much fanfare as the threat of regional war looms large, Biden on 9 August sought to demonstrate seriousness of purpose by personally signing, along with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, a statement that called for “immediate relief” for the Palestinians in Gaza, for and for captives/hostages and their families. According to the communique, the three leaders had “forge[d] a framework agreement that is now on the table with only the details of implementation left to conclude … There is no further time to waste nor excuses from any party for further delay.”
Anticipating further US-Israeli trickery, Hamas announced it would not participate in this week’s negotiations because the initiative had already been negotiated and at US insistence endorsed by the UN Security Council. Rather, it called upon the mediators to formulate a plan to implement the initiative Hamas had already accepted, and present it to the parties. After all, the 9 August communique had stated that the US, Egypt, and Qatar “are prepared to present a final bridging proposal that resolves the remaining implementation issues in a manner that meets the expectations of all parties.”
In US English, “immediate” and “no further time to waste” means you issue a statement on 9 August and call an “urgent meeting” almost a week later, on 15 August. As for the “final bridging proposal”, it predictably remains a work in progress. It is now scheduled for further discussion next Friday, 24 August. The US will be represented by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as clear a signal as can be that progress is not on the agenda.
Recognizing that any negotiations on Israel’s new conditions would blow up the entire process and with it the Middle East, the US is seeking to incorporate these conditions as its own clarifications to the initiative previously announced by Biden. Expect Blinken, with the earnest mendacity that is his trademark, to insist these have been part of the initiative all along.
As noted above, as with Oslo the purpose here is process, not its conclusion with an agreement. And as with Oslo, which in 2000 produced the Second Intifada because the charade became impossible to conceal further, the ceasefire process is producing diminishing returns. If this week’s negotiations successfully forestalled reprisals by Hizballah and Iran, that appears to be no longer the case. I suspect it is in this context that we should interpret Hizballah’s 16 August unveiling of its sophisticated Imad 4 underground bunker complex, seemingly impervious to either US or Israeli deep-penetration bombs.
Perhaps for this reason a “senior US official” was on 16 August quoted by the Times of Israel warning Iran of “cataclysmic” consequences if it exercised its right of self-defense against Israel. The official is presumably fully aware that “cataclysmic” is typically code for WMD, not the assassination of senior officials. We’ll find out soon enough if the threat has any impact. END
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