On a tour of Middle Eastern capitals this week, which included a stop in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken kept moving forward. He delivered letters from his Arab counterparts to Israeli officials, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wartime government to reduce the intensity of its military operations and expand humanitarian aid to populations wracked by hunger and disease. Blinken also affirmed US support for the Israeli campaign and ignored the initiative led by South Africa at the International Court of Justice that accuses Israel of committing genocide, describing it as “worthless.”
Blinken's travels this week are overshadowed by the Biden administration's concern about the possibility of an escalation of the war at the regional level. Israel may be withdrawing some of its forces from Gaza – despite the mounting toll on Palestinian lives – but tensions are rising on its northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces have been engaged in daily exchanges with the powerful Hezbollah militant group. “The risk of Israel launching an ambitious attack on Hezbollah has never gone away, but there has been broader concern about escalation in recent weeks, especially with Israel announcing the temporary ban,” my colleagues said, citing White House and State Department officials. Withdrawal of several thousand troops from Gaza on January 1 – a decision that could open up resources for a military operation in the north.
Then there is the question of what comes next in Gaza. American officials are pushing for a post-war scenario that would see substantial participation and investment from Israel's Arab neighbors, the return of non-Hamas Palestinian administrative rule in Gaza, and the revival of the political path to a two-state solution – the current solution. A dying vision of separate Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side.
In all of this, the Biden administration faces obstacles from within Netanyahu's far-right coalition. The right-wing prime minister has spent most of his political career diminishing the prospects for a two-state solution and has returned to power with allies closer to the right who explicitly reject any talk of establishing a Palestinian state. They also support more Jewish settlement in the West Bank and even in the war-torn Gaza Strip. The rhetoric coming from inside Israel has made American attempts to develop a regional plan to calm the crisis more difficult.
Gaps between Israelis and Arab leaders remain wide, with far-right members of Netanyahu's government calling for the mass displacement of civilians from Gaza and rejecting US calls for the establishment of a “renewed and revitalized” Palestinian Authority to play a role in post-war Gaza. “My colleagues reported, referring to Netanyahu’s public refusal to allow the Palestinian Authority to impose its post-war control over Gaza.
One analysis suggests that Netanyahu is kowtowing to the forces that will keep him in power – specifically, far-right troublemakers like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “These two far-right members are constantly working to inflame differences between Israel and America and fan the flames of polarization in Israel. “Netanyahu appears to be their prisoner,” Amos Harel wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Harel added that the Israeli right's appetite for maximum victory and broader domestic politics at the moment may mean that Netanyahu “has a clear interest in making the war in Gaza continue throughout next year.” It is difficult to refute American fears that Netanyahu might think this time, with his back To the wall, in further escalation on the northern front.
This is a far cry from the Middle East that the Biden administration had hoped to see during its term. The White House has abandoned much of its human rights agenda in the region in favor of prioritizing Israel's normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia. The political, economic, and defense agreements that will result from this formal rapprochement will, in the minds of many decision-makers in Washington, help stabilize the Middle East and allow the United States to shift its focus toward the Asia-Pacific region and its thornier challenges. imposed by a rising China.
But provocations by the Israeli far right and the devastating scale of the war in Gaza are forcing difficult talks back to the table – including the recognition that the lack of political and civil rights for millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation can no longer be just a simple solution. Sweeped under the rug.
After meetings in Saudi Arabia this week, Blinken told reporters that Riyadh remains interested in normalizing relations with Israel, but that “will require ending the conflict in Gaza, and it will also clearly require that there be a practical path to the establishment of a Palestinian state.” “.
In an interview on Tuesday with the BBC, Khalid bin Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, referred to the Israeli right as an obstacle to political reconciliation. He said: “The problem we face today with the current government in Israel is that there is an extreme and absolute point of view that does not work to reach a settlement, and therefore will never be able to end the conflict.”
Currently, Netanyahu and his allies are still clinging to their position. Analysts confirm that the course of the war and escalating regional tensions may also favor Netanyahu's arch enemy, Iran.
“The Israeli right’s 1948-style grand strategy to redraw its demographic and geopolitical realities, on the one hand, and Iran’s patient exploitation of the growing arc of conflict, on the other, threatens to throw the Middle East, and the world, into chaos.” “This trend is very dangerous in 2024,” noted Paul Salem, president and CEO of the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington. With little US leverage over Israel — or, for that matter, Iran — and no other regional or global player able to change this dangerous course, the region appears to be heading in a very explosive direction.
