by James M Dorsey
US, Egyptian, and Qatari mediators appear optimistic after two days of Gaza ceasefire talks. Even so, US officials are considering confronting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu publicly should the talks ultimately fail.
Long frustrated with Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to heed US advice, President Joe Biden is considering shelving his bear hug approach for a more assertive attitude should the US-Qatar-Egypt mediated talks fail, according to US officials.
For now, the officials’ remarks seem more like a stick than a carrot intended to coax Israel and Hamas to show the flexibility necessary to sustain the ceasefire talks and conclude them with an agreement that holds out the promise of a permanent end to the ten-month-old war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to arrive in Israel on Sunday in what is either a sign of progress in the Doha talks or an effort to step up the pressure on Mr. Netanyahu.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to arrive in Israel on Sunday in what is either a sign of progress in the Doha talks or an effort to step up the pressure on Mr. Netanyahu.
Either way, the stakes are high.
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The families of Hamas-held hostages see the talks as the last chance to ensure their loved ones return alive. The mediators believe the negotiations are the last hope of preventing the Gaza war from evolving into a full-fledged regional conflagration.
The mediators bet that Iran and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, would not want to endanger a ceasefire by retaliating against Israel for the killing in Tehran of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut.
Without a ceasefire agreement, retaliation is likely inevitable.
Raising the stakes, Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem insisted the group would retaliate for Mr. Shukr’s killing irrespective of whether a Gaza ceasefire is achieved and despite Iranian pressure not to strike if a ceasefire is achieved.
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Hezbollah showcases underground missiles. Credit: Al-Manar
To reinforce the point, Hezbollah released a video of a fortified underground facility, claiming it had “precision and non-precision missiles” capable of striking deep inside Israel.
In an interesting twist, Hezbollah released Mr. Qassem’s remarks and the video amid strains in the group’s relationship with neighbouring Syria, an ally of Iran and Hezbollah, over President Bashar al-Assad’s refusal to be part of any Iranian or Hezbollah escalation of hostilities with Israel.
In a statement after two days of talks in Doha, the mediators said they were progressing towards a ceasefire.
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The mediators said they presented a proposal to Israel and Hamas that was consistent with the principles of Mr. Biden’s May 31 ceasefire plan but narrowed the gaps between the two sides’ positions. They said technical teams would work out the details of the proposal in advance of another meeting of the US, Qatari, Egyptian, and Israeli negotiators in Cairo late next week.
In response to the mediators’ statement, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said, “Israel’s fundamental principles are well known to the mediators and the US, and Israel hopes that their pressure will lead Hamas to accept the principles of May 27, so that the details of the agreement can be implemented.” Mr, Netanyahu’s office was referring to Mr. Biden’s May 31 announcement.
It was not immediately clear if Hamas sees the latest proposal as sufficient grounds to also send a delegation to Cairo to meet with the mediators.
Earlier, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan told Al Jazeera that the mediators had yet to advise the group that Israel had accepted the three-phase proposal as is that Mr. Biden announced on May 31.
Mr. Netanyahu has since the announcement attempted to attach new conditions to the proposal, including a post-war Israeli military presence along the Egyptian-Gazan border that Hamas and Egypt have rejected. Hamas has insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Strip.
Wielding the stick, the US officials said the administration’s attitude change could involve publicly blaming Israel and/or Mr. Netanyahu for the talks’ failure, appealing directly to the Israeli public, and sanctioning the prime minister’s most outspoken ultra-nationalist coalition partners, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
The Biden administration has in recent months sanctioned several settlers accused of vigilante violence against Palestinians as well as four illegal West Bank outposts, and a settler organisation.
Sanctioning Messrs. Ben Gvir and Smotrich could fuel tensions in Mr. Netanyahu’s government between the two men and ultra-Orthodox members of the Cabinet over the national security minister’s provocative push for the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount or Harm al-Sharif, the site of ancient Jewish temples and the third holiest site in Islam.
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The Biden administration earlier this week took Mr. Ben Gvir to task for storming the Mount with up to 3,000 of his singing, dancing, and praying ultra-nationalist religious followers in violation of long-standing arrangements with the Jordanian-controlled endowment that administers the Haram al-Sharif’s Muslim holy sites.
The administration separately condemned Mr. Smotrich for asserting that starving Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants would be “justified” and “moral.”
Seemingly eager to fend off potential sanctions, Mr. Smotrich, a West Bank settler who in the past condoned vigilante violence against Palestinians, condemned recent attacks on West Bank villages as “criminal anarchist violence.”
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Vigilante settlers attack the West Bank village of Jit. Credit: Global Eye News
Mr. Smotrich’s remarks contrasted starkly with his assertion last year that the West Bank town of Huwara “needs to be wiped out” and “the State of Israel should do it” after settler vigilantes went on a rampage in the city.
Yated Ne’eman, a newspaper reflecting the views of United Torah Judaism (UTJ), one of Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners that supports a Gaza ceasefire deal, called on the party to consider leaving the government in protest of Mr. Ben Gvir’s agitation on the Temple Mount.
“Jews going up to the Temple Mount is like throwing a match into an oil well. The Temple Mount may turn into a volcano that covers the entire Middle East with ash,” Yated Ne’eman said in a front-page editorial.
Prominent Jewish religious leaders, led by former chief Sephardic rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, appeared to back Yated Ne’eman’s call.
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Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef on YouTube. Source: YouTube
In a Hebrew-language YouTube clip with Arabic subtitles, Mr. Yosef, addressing the “nations of the world,” cautioned, “Don’t view the ministers in question as representing the People of Israel. They don’t. Please calm things down. We all believe in one God, (and) want peace between the nations. We mustn’t let radical fringes lead us.”
Speaking at a security conference in Israel in June, Vice President Kamala Harris’ national security advisor, Phil Gordon, laid out what an appeal to the Israeli public by Mr. Biden or Ms. Harris could look like.
“Israel is facing growing international criticism and pressure from the United Nations and other international bodies. Vocal segments of the American public have spoken out against the war in Gaza. As a result, over the past eight and a half months, the U.S.-Israel partnership has been tested, perhaps as never before… Notwithstanding all the very real challenges and tests…I believe there is a positive path forward for Israel, the United States, and our strategic partnership.,” Mr. Gordon said.
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US Vice President Kamala Harris’s national security adviser Philip Gordon speaks at the Herzliya Conference, 24 June 2024. Source: YouTube
Mr. Gordon warned that a rejection of Mr. Biden’s ceasefire framework “would not bring about some undefined version of ‘total victory,’ but would lead to endless conflict, draining Israel’s resources, contributing to its global isolation, and preventing the hostages from being reunited with their families. By contrast, implementation of the deal brings the hostages home and opens up the pathway to the more hopeful future we all need… The choice should be clear.”
A public rift between the United States and Mr. Netanyahu would come at a sensitive time for Mr. Biden’s Democratic party.
Opening on Monday in Chicago, the party’s convention, which is expected to officially nominate Ms. Harris as its candidate in November’s US presidential election, is slated to become an Israeli-Palestinian battlefield with pro-Palestinian groups and relatives of Hamas-held hostages planning to converge on the city.
Biden administration officials may be buoyed by indications that Mr. Netanyahu is losing support in staunch American pro-Israel constituencies despite the rapturous welcome Republicans accorded him when he addressed both houses of the US Congress last month.
Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon argued that a recent MSNBC conversation between supporters of Israel Joe Scarborough, a talk show host and former House of Representatives member, and retired conservative US Admiral James Stavridis mirrored the writing on the wall.
Messrs. Scarborough and Stavridis agreed that Mr. Netanyahu was the major roadblock preventing a Gaza ceasefire.
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Joe Scarborough and James Stavridis on Morning Joe. Source: MSNBC
“The dialogue between Scarborough and Stavridis was a testament to Netanyahu’s loss of legitimacy in the eyes of many Americans who are natural supporters of Israel… they realize that Israel’s prime minister is, just as Scarborough and Stavridis described him, a corrupt politician clinging to power at all costs, even if that means blocking a hostage deal so that his alliance with his far-right coalition partners will not be threatened.” Mr. Tibon said.
A more hardheaded US attitude towards Mr. Netanyahu, including an appeal to the Israeli public, would seek to exploit what analyst Mairav Zonszein describes as an Israeli “society gripped by despair but at a loss for how to carve a way out.”
Ms. Zonszein noted that “however many Israelis may now agree with” the Israeli military’s insistence that a ceasefire is needed to free the hostages and avert an escalation of the war as major strikes by Hezbollah and Iran loom large, Israelis “are not able to push the government out — or onto an alternative path.”
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.