Despite 'tough' talk on Netanyahu, US enforces Israeli aggression

Blocking multiple diplomatic opportunities, the US and Israel threaten new regional escalation.

Aaron Maté Aug 4

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(Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

As the world awaits an expected retaliation from Iran and its allies to Israel’s latest escalations – most provocatively, the assassination of Hamas political leader and chief negotiator Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran -- the White House is claiming to be upset with Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to anonymous US officials, President Biden told Netanyahu, in a “tough” and “heated” phone call Thursday, that Israel needs to “stop escalating tensions in the region and move immediately toward a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.” Biden also purportedly complained that the assassination of Haniyeh in Iran’s capital “could trigger the wider regional war that he has been trying to avert.” In their Oval Office meeting days earlier, Biden is said to have “raised his voice” and demanded that Netanyahu reach a Gaza deal within a week to two weeks.

“Biden realized that Netanyahu was lying to him about the hostages,” a senior US official told Haaretz. “He's not saying it publicly yet, but in the meeting between them, he specifically told him, 'Stop bullshitting me.'”

While now claiming to be taking a hard line, the Biden team’s effort to distance itself from Netanyahu is nothing new: throughout more than 300 days of Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza, the White House has repeatedly claimed frustration with him all while continuing to arm his military and block calls for a ceasefire. Netanyahu has now become so bellicose that he has forced the White House to abandon another ruse: in claiming that it pressed the Israeli leader to finalize a ceasefire deal, US officials are tacitly admitting that their claim that Hamas is the sole obstacle to one is a complete lie.

Israeli officials are more forthright in acknowledging Netanyahu’s intransigence. A top member of Israel’s negotiating team tells Haaretz that Israeli defense chiefs do not believe that Netanyahu is interested in a ceasefire and hostage agreement. “There is a deal on the table,” Mossad chief David Barnea was quoted as telling the Israeli leader. “If we delay, we could miss the opportunity. We have to take it.”

Yet Netanyahu has every reason to feel emboldened.

In Washington last month, a bipartisan Congressional chamber treated him to dozens of standing ovations. When it comes to his critics, only one lawmaker, Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib, had the courage to protest him in person. And despite claiming to have reprimanded him in private, the Biden administration is only offering public encouragement.

The White House readout of Biden and Netanyahu’s Thursday phone call did not even include a token mention of a ceasefire. It instead announced that Biden had pledged “new defensive U.S. military deployments” to the Middle East as part of his “commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran.” Those deployments have come in the form of new US warships, fighter jets, and an aircraft carrier, to complement the previous US military assets that Biden has sent to defend Israel from regional retaliation.

As US officials have quietly acknowledged, the US is not defending Israel from any serious threats, but Israel’s right to threaten everyone else – what the New York Times described as Israel’s “aura of power.” According to the Wall Street Journal, the Israeli military “is betting the response” from Iran and its allies “will be manageable—and that it is more important to win the fear of its adversaries after the security failure on Oct. 7.”

Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, has newly explained Israel’s mentality. “We live in a region where no one appreciates anything but military force and the willingness to use it,” Eiland said. Therefore, assassinations such as Haniyeh’s “help Israel to regain not only self-confidence but also some abilities to deter our enemies.”

Eiland has previously advised that Palestinians in Gaza should be deprived of water by all means possible. “Israel, as I understand, closed the water supply to Gaza,” Eiland told Israeli army radio in October. “But there are many wells in Gaza, which contain water which they treat locally, since originally they contain salt. If the energy shortage in Gaza makes it so that they stop pumping out water, that's good. Otherwise we have to attack these water treatment plants in order to create a situation of thirst and hunger.” Perhaps he sees creating thirst and hunger as another way to boost Israeli “self-confidence.”

Eiland’s dictate that the Middle East region only understands “military force and the willingness to use it” evokes Noam Chomsky’s observation that the US-led order, in which Israel is a central proxy, operates as a Mafia racket. Outside of its confines, Israel’s neighbors, including Hamas, have long offered alternatives to military force. In 2002, the Arab League offered Israel full normalization in return for a withdrawal from all Arab territories (Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian) that it occupied in 1967; the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital; and a “just resolution” to the refugee issue. The initiative was subsequently endorsed by Iran, which signed on to a December 2017 declaration calling for a “two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine.”

Top Hamas officials have long voiced a willingness to accept this position – a massive compromise for Palestinians, as their proposed state would comprise just 22% of their historic homeland. Those willing to entertain this compromise include the now assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. “We are ready for political negotiations for a two-state solution with Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine,” Haniyeh said in October, adding only two conditions: an immediate ceasefire and the opening of humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.

Just as it had with all previous overtures, Israel ignored this diplomatic opportunity out of an overriding commitment to using military force and instilling “fear” in its neighbors. Despite the Biden administration’s latest round of tough talk toward Netanyahu, the US remains committed to Israeli aggression and hegemony, no matter the ever-increasing risks of greater regional disaster.

© 2024 Aaron Maté
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