{"id":272609,"date":"2024-09-02T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=272609"},"modified":"2024-08-30T06:17:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T05:17:14","slug":"the-us-is-israels-accomplice-not-a-ceasefire-mediator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/09\/the-us-is-israels-accomplice-not-a-ceasefire-mediator\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Is Israel\u2019s Accomplice, Not a Ceasefire Mediator"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi meets US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Presidential Palace in Cairo on 10 Jun 2024. [File: AP\/Amr Nabil]<\/p><\/div>\n

Washington is purposefully dragging out negotiations to enable Israel\u2019s pursuit of its genocidal goals.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

28 Aug 2024 –<\/em> On 21 Jul 2006, nine days into the 34-day Israeli war on Lebanon<\/a>\u00a0that killed 1,200 people, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice\u00a0opined\u00a0that \u201can immediate ceasefire\u00a0without political conditions does not make sense\u201d.<\/p>\n

In response to a journalist\u2019s question at a press briefing, the secretary declared that she had \u201cno interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante\u201d.<\/p>\n

In addition to\u00a0manoeuvring\u00a0to delay a ceasefire, the US also\u00a0expedited shipments<\/a>\u00a0of precision-guided bombs to Israel to assist in the mass slaughter.<\/p>\n

Just two and a half years later, Rice was back agitating against a too-quick ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where over the course of 22 days in December 2008 and January 2009 Israel massacred some 1,400 Palestinians.<\/p>\n

In this case, Rice claimed that the US was \u201cworking toward a ceasefire that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza\u201d, Hamas\u2019s largely ineffectual rockets clearly being a graver problem than the slaughter of 1,400 people.<\/p>\n

Fast forward 15 years to Israel\u2019s\u00a0straight-up genocide<\/a>\u00a0in the Gaza Strip, which is undoubtedly a more effective means of eradicating the \u201cstatus quo ante\u201d \u2013 at least if we take \u201cstatus quo ante\u201d to mean Gaza and its inhabitants. With official fatalities now exceeding\u00a040,000 Palestinians<\/a>\u00a0and predictions that the real death toll may in fact be\u00a0many times higher<\/a>, an immediate ceasefire is the only non-genocidal option on the table.<\/p>\n

And while US President Joe Biden has repeatedly\u00a0stressed the urgency\u00a0of just such a ceasefire, it is a bit tricky to stop a war when you have\u00a0just approved an additional $20bn<\/a>\u00a0in weapons transfers to the party that has officially killed nearly\u00a017,000 Palestinian children<\/a>\u00a0since October.<\/p>\n

Indeed, current US qualifications to ostensibly mediate a ceasefire in Gaza are\u00a0rather dubious\u00a0given that the country could easily be taken for a de facto belligerent to the conflict. On Sunday, The New York Times\u00a0reported\u00a0that, like Israel, the US has \u201cpoured vast resources into trying to find\u201d Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and has not only \u201cprovided ground-penetrating radar\u201d to Israel but also tasked US spy agencies \u201cwith intercepting Mr Sinwar\u2019s communications\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Times quotes White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on additional US contributions to the obsessive search for Sinwar:\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve had people in Israel sitting in the room with the Israelis working this problem set. And obviously we have a lot of experience hunting high-value targets\u201d.<\/p>\n

But again, simultaneously \u201chunting\u201d the leader of the very organisation one professes to be negotiating a ceasefire with does not exactly speak to one\u2019s credibility as a mediator.<\/p>\n

According to the Times article, US officials believe that Sinwar\u2019s killing or capture would give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu \u201ca\u00a0way to claim a significant military victory and potentially make him more willing to end military operations in Gaza\u201d \u2013 a most convincing argument, no doubt, for extrajudicial assassination.<\/p>\n

Not that Netanyahu is interested in ever really \u201cending\u201d anything, anyway, regardless of Sinwar\u2019s fate. The Israeli premier, after all, is of the opinion\u00a0that Israel reserves the right\u00a0to resume fighting Hamas notwithstanding any ceasefire agreement, which kind of defeats the whole purpose.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Times of Israel reported that, although US officials persisted in insisting on \u201cprogress\u201d in ceasefire negotiations, Israel\u2019s Channel 12 news had learned that the \u201cthorny issues\u201d had been set aside for the time being: \u201cThe network said American mediators hope to reach agreements on other matters first, such as Israel\u2019s ability to veto the release of some Palestinian security prisoners and exile others.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cthorny\u201d stuff includes matters like whether Israel should be allowed to keep occupying the entire length of Gaza\u2019s border with Egypt after the war. This issue would be \u201cleft to the very end of talks, according to the [Channel 12] report, which quoted officials saying they don\u2019t believe Hamas chief Sinwar will budge on the Gaza-Egypt border unless he feels the [Israeli military] is closing in on him,\u201d The Times of Israel reported.<\/p>\n

Per the diplomatic hallucinations of\u00a0White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, delaying tactics in the interest of enabling the perpetual occupation of whatever remains of the Gaza Strip are apparently indicative of\u00a0\u201cconstructive\u201d talks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And in the meantime, of course, genocide proceeds apace, as the Israeli military goes about inflicting unceasing terror and starvation<\/a> on the civilian population. Access to water and aid delivery has now been restricted in the city of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, where the United Nations has been forced to shut down operations<\/a> once again in order to abide by Israel\u2019s pathological evacuation orders.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Israel\u2019s habit<\/a> of commanding Palestinians to evacuate an area and then bombing them when they comply is hardly \u201cconstructive\u201d.<\/p>\n

The New York Times dispatch on US assistance in the \u201chunt\u201d for Sinwar quotes a senior Israeli official on the \u201cpriceless\u201d nature of US intelligence support. But as the United States continues buying Israel time for the obliteration of the status quo ante in Gaza along with all pretences to human decency and morality, the world itself will pay the price.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Bel\u00e9n Fern\u00e1ndez is an <\/em>Al Jazeera columnist and <\/em>a contributing editor at <\/em>Jacobin Magazine. She has written for the<\/em> New York Times, London Review of Books, Current Affairs, and<\/em> Middle East Eye, among numerous other publications. She is the author of <\/em>Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), <\/em>Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), <\/em>Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon (Warscapes, 2016), and <\/em>The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work (Verso, 2011). <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Aug 2024 – Washington is purposefully dragging out negotiations to enable Israel\u2019s pursuit of its genocidal goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":252979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2628,88,70],"class_list":["post-272609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-conflict-mediation","tag-israel","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272613,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272609\/revisions\/272613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}