The Biden administration claims to be pushing for a “temporary ceasefire” between Israel and Hezbollah to avert a larger conflict, but this is very late in the day and it is not a serious effort to prevent a new war in Lebanon. It is at best a desperate, last-minute exercise in going through the motions of diplomacy. The administration would like to pretend that it is a passive bystander pleading from the sidelines instead of the chief patron and arms supplier of the main belligerent in the conflict, and it designs its entreaties to be toothless so that Israel can safely ignore them.
The US has refused to exert any pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for the last eleven months, and it has continued supplying Israel with weapons no matter how those weapons have been used to commit war crimes against Palestinians. Now US officials say that they don’t want further escalation in Lebanon, but once again the administration won’t back up those words with action. The US could use its leverage to rein Israel in and insist on the de-escalation that the administration says that it wants, but the president has shown that he has no interest in doing that.
The empty Gaza ceasefire negotiations prove as much. The Gaza ceasefire talks have become an interminable process designed to lead nowhere. The administration has catered to the Netanyahu government’s preferences at every turn. Each time that Netanyahu adds new deal-breakers or otherwise seeks to derail negotiations with new attacks, the administration has dutifully taken his side and pretended that Hamas is the sole obstacle to securing an agreement. The US cannot be a credible diplomatic actor in the region when its primary role is acting as Netanyahu’s PR agent.
The Israeli government assumes that the US won’t withhold weapons, diplomatic support, or military protection under any circumstances, and that has encouraged Netanyahu to pursue increasingly aggressive goals. Because the US shields Israel from military reprisals, as it did earlier this year during Iran’s missile and drone strikes, it has given Netanyahu free rein to lash out whenever and wherever he wants. The administration has dressed all of this up as preventing a wider regional war, but the reality is that they have simply delayed the conflagration while making it more likely that it will be even more destructive when it occurs.
🔗SOURCE ➡️ Antiwar.com
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