The Israeli right undermines Biden's Middle East agenda

[applegrove]

The Israeli right undermines Biden’s Middle East agenda

Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor
Columnist
January 10, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. EST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/10/israel-right-biden-middle-east-blinken/

"SNIP........

The Biden administration is trying to thread the trickiest of needles in the Middle East. While remaining steadfast in its support for Israel as it pursues its war against militant group Hamas, the United States is also trying to lessen the harm inflicted on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and minimize the scope of the conflict, which is threatening to widen across the region. Critics — including a chorus of pro-cease-fire protesters who interrupted President Biden at a Monday event in Charleston, S.C. — argue that those efforts at mitigation are broadly failing, and that the White House is either deliberately or witlessly presiding over a vast slaughter of Palestinians (at least 23,210 people, at last count) and the de facto ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.

On a tour of Middle Eastern capitals this week that included a stop in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed ahead. He delivered messages from Arab counterparts to Israeli officials, urging the wartime government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale back the intensity of its military operations and expand humanitarian assistance for a population wracked by hunger and disease. Blinken also reiterated the U.S. backing of Israel’s campaign and shrugged off a South African-led initiative at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide as “meritless.”

Looming over Blinken’s trips this week are the Biden administration’s concern that the war may spiral regionally. Israel may be withdrawing some forces from Gaza — though the toll on Palestinian lives has only worsened — but tensions are mounting on its northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces have been engaged in daily exchanges with influential militant group Hezbollah. “The risk that Israel might launch an ambitious attack on Hezbollah has never gone away,” my colleagues reported, citing White House and State Department officials, “but there has been broader concern about an escalation in recent weeks, particularly as Israel announced the temporary withdrawal of several thousand troops from Gaza on Jan. 1 — a decision that could open up resources for a military operation in the north.”

Then there’s the question of what comes next in Gaza. U.S. officials are pushing for a post-war scenario that would see substantive engagement and investment from Israel’s Arab neighbors, the return of non-Hamas Palestinian administrative rule to Gaza and the revival of a political track for the two-state solution — the now-moribund vision of separate Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side.


.........SNIP"

[brush]

1. When alleged allies work against you, are they still allies?

And should funding/arms shipments continue?

[applegrove]

2. Well one of the two US aircraft carriers off the coast

of Gaza was said to be lifting its anchor last week.

[Grins]

3. Elections have consequences: Drop the hammer!! NM

[NotMissD]

4. Am I missing something here

Are Hezbollah and Hamas not at war with Israel and attacking it daily? There probably is not a simple solution for the US, but I can guarantee you that yielding the land on which Israel sits to Hezbollah and Hamas is not on the short list. It is time for the US to say exactly what they want. No one liners or banners but a comprehensive plan A/B/C and to schedule a sit down with everyone in the same room. And that includes Blinken and his counterparts in Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah. Put them in a room and let them out when they produce a plan. Or have they and did I miss it? Asking for world peace is not a plan of how to achieve it. As it is, people are just asking for peace, but doing nothing to achieve it, other than talking. Put everyone in one room and they can talk to each other and not at each other.

[applegrove]

5. The plan is from the outside players. They

would fund the reconstruction of Gaza and monitor how Gaza and the West Bank are governed leading to a 2 state solution. Or a path to it. Heather Cox Richardson wrote about it in her letters from an American:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-2-2024

[NotMissD]

6. Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel and the US have billions to rebuild Gaza

Put them in a room, each entity kicks in an ante and they figure out how to use it. That might not be all that it takes to achieve peace, but at least then they are talking to each other.

[applegrove]

7. Here is Heather Cox Richardson on the issue. Only the Palestinian

Authority would be recognized. Certainly not terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. They should be destroyed. I've heard reports Hamas may only wind up degraded substantially like ISIS is. I hope it goes the way of the dodo bird.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-2-2024

[NotMissD]

9. I tend to disagree

You have to negotiate. Whether that is cooperation or surrender, who can say. Once you are in the same bed, everyone is the same height.

[applegrove]

8. Here is an article that goes more into depth.

https://botsin.space/@globeandmail/111731419503018190