By Geoff Mirelowitz and Argiris Malapanis

After months of U.S. opposition to a ceasefire in the war on Gaza, the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted a U.S.-sponsored ceasefire plan in a near-unanimous vote on June 10. Yet no end to the war is in sight.

Israel’s relentless assault grinds on. The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has passed 37,000 with over 85,000 wounded. On June 12, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, warned, “A significant proportion of Gaza’s population is now facing catastrophic hunger and famine-like conditions.”

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The U.S.-backed plan would also result in the release of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas and its allies, as well as many Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

U.S. president Joe Biden announced it first on May 31, claiming the offer originated with Israel. Yet the Israeli government has never publicly endorsed the proposal.

On June 12, Hamas issued a formal response that conditioned its support for the plan on a series of amendments.

“The [U.S.] State Department did not offer an official response to Hamas’s criticism,” reported The Washington Post on June 13. But a State Department official speaking under a condition of anonymity, said, “We’re not going to bother responding to a terrorist organization whose haggling has prevented a cease-fire from already being in effect.”

Earlier, U.S. secretary of state Anthony Blinken had accused Hamas of “making unworkable demands during cease-fire negotiations,” the Post reported. “It’s time for the haggling to stop and the cease-fire to start,” Blinken told reporters at a news conference in Qatar.

But Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking outside the Group of Seven meeting in Italy that Biden was attending, struck a different tone. “We are working actively to generate a path forward based on what Hamas has come in with,” he said. “It gets us to a result that’s consistent with what the U.N. Security Council laid down and consistent with [what] President Biden laid out; we believe that is possible.”

Biden himself seemed pessimistic. “When asked whether he was confident that they would reach a deal soon,” reported the Post, “he said ‘No,’ adding, ‘I haven’t lost hope.’”

There is little evidence of any hope for the deal.

The Biden administration faces a dilemma as it seeks to bring the war to a close before the U.S. presidential election in November, while also advancing Washington’s long-term interests in the Middle East.

Still seeking a deal with Saudi Arabia

For months prior to the Hamas-led October 7 attack, the U.S. government was working to secure a historic diplomatic agreement with Saudi Arabia. The deal would lead to normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel and cement a U.S. alliance with regimes in the Arab world that could serve as a bulwark against Iranian influence in the region. The October 7 attack and Israel’s genocidal response disrupted that prospect.

However, Washington has not given up.

U.S. to Offer Landmark Defense Treaty to Saudi Arabia in Effort to Spur Israel Normalization Deal — The White House is trying to keep broader regional diplomatic efforts going amid months of fruitless cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas, announced an article in the June 9 Wall Street Journal.

The article pointed to additional reasons U.S. imperialism wants this pact. “A megadeal that includes a U.S.-Saudi security alliance and Saudi-Israeli normalization,” wrote the Journal, “would represent a geostrategic victory for Washington, said Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior U.S. intelligence official now at the Atlantic Council think tank, with potential to shift historic alliances in the Middle East.”

“By ensuring that Saudi Arabia is more fulsomely tied to the U.S. when it comes to security, technology, and long-term economic and commercial efforts,” Panikoff said, it would also “disrupt efforts by Beijing to make progress in the region and find additional allies willing to support its efforts to shift away from the U.S.-led liberal international order.”

However, the Saudi monarchy wants an end to the war in Gaza on terms that include, according to the Journal, “irreversible and irrevocable steps within several years toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.” Israel has steadfastly blocked any prospect of a Palestinian state, for decades.

It has had Washington’s tacit support. Yet the June 10 UN Security Council resolution expressly includes support for “two democratic States, Israel and Palestine.” That provision has received little attention.

The Journal also reported that “U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last month that Israel’s long-term security depends on its regional integration and normal relations with Arab states, including Saudi Arabia.”

Today that goal appears impossible without a change in Israel’s position; a change that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials insist they will never agree to.

Biden is now seeking an end to the war. Netanyahu is not. Hamas, Biden said May 31, “is no longer capable of carrying out another Oct. 7. It’s time for this war to end.” Already trailing former president Donald Trump in most election polls, Biden will have a more difficult time winning the votes he needs if the carnage in Gaza continues.

Yet Washington will not take the necessary steps to impose its will on Israel’s rulers. That would require cutting off the billions in military and economic aid that flow from the United States to Israel. In the absence of any serious possibility Washington will take that course, Israel’s leadership remains largely immune to whatever pressure the Biden administration tries to exert.

After Delay, Top Democrats in Congress Sign Off on Sale of F-15 Jets to Israel, read a headline in the June 18 New York Times, confirming once again Washington’s unwavering military support for Israel.

Netanyahu may well expect more support with less criticism for his conduct of the war, if Trump returns to the White House. That may not be a sure thing. The Trump administration, after all, initiated the “Abraham Accords” that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab regimes, while also endorsing the Israeli move to declare Jerusalem as its capital by relocating the U.S. embassy there.

Biden seeks to extend those agreements to Saudi Arabia, a goal Trump may share. But counting on a smoother relationship with Trump, if he is re-elected, is a bet Netanyahu is willing to make while continuing the war.

Netanyahu’s government suffered a defection on June 9 when Benny Gantz resigned from Israel’s war cabinet — a move that prompted Netanyahu to disband the war cabinet on June 17. Gantz is a former chief of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general staff. A political rival of Netanyahu and possible future prime minister, Gantz joined the government after October 7 in a display of “national unity.” He has challenged Netanyahu over plans for how Gaza will be governed when the war ends. He argues Netanyahu has offered no viable plan, which is certainly true.

Gantz has called for the establishment of an administrative body overseeing Gaza’s civilian affairs, with the backing of U.S., European, Arab, and Palestinian officials. But there is no evidence that such a body can or will be constituted.

This is a question that hangs over the future of Gaza — and Israel. None of the major actors in the region or internationally have put forward a viable plan. Behind this quandary looms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Israel’s long-standing opposition to that right is at the root of the conflict.

War grinds on

As negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage/prisoner exchange deal drag on, the horror in Gaza continues unabated. A case in point was the June 8 IDF assault that resulted in the rescue of four Israeli hostages held by Hamas in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The Gaza Health Ministry reported at least 274 Palestinians died in the Israeli military operation, with hundreds more wounded.

That outcome was in no way surprising or unexpected.

“The full extent of the destruction in Nuseirat is still emerging, as Palestinian eyewitnesses share more details about the chaos of that day,” explained a June 11 Washington Post report. “Tanks, jets and drones raged outside, part of what a former Israeli commander described as a ‘wall of fire’ — meant to provide cover to the military unit trying to ferry three male hostages to safety.”

The Post continued: “Abdel Hamid Ghorab, a 33-year-old paramedic… described ‘random and continuous bombing in the vicinity of the hospital with unprecedented intensity.’”

“Ghorab said he helped move more than 100 seriously wounded patients — including children with missing and damaged limbs — to the larger al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where amputations could take place.

“‘All they cared about was carrying out the operation, even if it was at the expense of all these lives,’ he said.”

The IDF carried out the raid during the day to maximize the element of surprise, the Post reported. “That also meant that Nuseirat’s narrow streets were packed with civilians.”

The IDF defended its murderous rampage, claiming that “every civilian life lost in this war is a result of how Hamas has operated,” as an Israeli military spokesman told ABC News. But the Post reporting showed otherwise.

“Hamas’s tactics do not excuse Israel from legal culpability, according to experts in international law,” the Post wrote, “which requires militaries to take all possible precautions to prevent civilian harm. The principle of proportionality prohibits armies from inflicting civilian casualties that are excessive in relation to the direct military advantage anticipated at the time of the strike.”

Addressing these issues in a June 13 opinion piece in The Guardian, Kenneth Roth, a former director of Human Rights Watch, proposed that the International Criminal Court should investigate Israel’s hostage rescue raid. “The Israeli military has no history of investigating senior IDF officials for war crimes,” Roth wrote, “let alone of examining the rules of engagement that it issues for military operations. That is why investigation by the international criminal court is needed. 

“The US government welcomed the release of the four hostages,” he continued, “but the huge loss of Palestinian civilian life didn’t merit even a footnote. If the US government greenlights such deadly operations despite the serious questions about their legality, it will only encourage Netanyahu to undertake more of the same.”

A reprehensible attitude

This IDF assault, like the entire Israeli war on Gaza, confirms that to Israel and those like the U.S. government that support its methods, the lives of Palestinians are worth less than the lives of Israeli Jews. This reprehensible attitude will continue to have dire consequences for Israeli society for decades.

Odeh Bisharat, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz about Noa Argamani, one of the recently rescued hostages. “She didn’t deserve to be kidnapped and undergo a living hell, and she has the right to be happy and return home safely,” Bisharat said. “More generally, the suffering of the hostages’ families arouses deep solidarity in anyone, Arab or Jewish, with compassion in his or her heart.”

But, Bisharat continued, “the sigh of relief at the four hostages’ escape from captivity evaporated instantly. After all, how is it possible to be happy when the price, according to Palestinian authorities, was at least 270 dead and nearly 700 wounded, most of them civilians?

“Forgive me for my obtuseness in not knowing how to be happy when the bodies of 270 people are lying in front of me. Forgive me for not going out and dancing in the streets when the agonized cries of hundreds of wounded people can be heard in the background. I see hair-raising scenes on television (though not Israeli stations) — bodies of children and women and men, some already dead, others on a torturous road to a death that will come as a release.”

Organizations in Israel such as Standing Together continue to oppose the war and the denial of Palestinian humanity that fuels it. Such efforts to organize joint action by Jews and Palestinians set an important example. But much more work and political struggle will be necessary to overcome the attitudes that prevail today among a large majority of Israeli Jews.

Deepening oppression on the West Bank

When Israel launched its war on Gaza last October, it also imposed even harsher conditions on Palestinians living under its military occupation of the West Bank. This has deepened a potentially explosive situation.

The UN has reported that 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinians on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem since it began keeping records in 2005. From October 7, 2023, through May 12 of this year, 489 Palestinians have been killed. In the same period, 10 Israelis, including 4 Israeli settlers, have lost their lives there.

More than 500,000 Jewish settlers now live among 2.7 million Palestinians on the West Bank. Most countries consider those settlements illegal under international law. A June 4 New York Times article reported from the Arab-Palestinian community of Tuqu and the Jewish-Israeli settlement of Tekoa.

Citing “a dynamic playing out across the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” it reported: “As much of the world has focused on the war in Gaza, Jewish settlers miles away in the West Bank have hastened the rate at which they are seizing land previously used by Palestinians, rights groups say.”

Dror Etkes, a field researcher with the Israeli monitoring group Kerem Navot, estimated that since the war on Gaza began, settlers have taken more than 37,000 acres of land from Palestinians across the West Bank.

“There is a linkage between violence and settler expansion,” he said. “They are taking revenge on the Palestinians by taking more and more land.”

“The Israeli military mobilized thousands of reservist settlers to protect the settlements,” reported the Times, “and imposed wide-ranging restrictions on Palestinians, blocking the exits from their communities and barring Palestinian workers from entering Israel or the settlements.”

“They closed everything and took everything,” said Hassan al-Shaer, 24, an electrician. “There is no work and no money.”

This process led to “new guard posts manned by Israeli soldiers. New roads patrolled by Israeli settlers. And, most tellingly, a new metal gate blocking the town’s sole road to those areas, installed and locked by the Israeli army to keep Palestinians out,” wrote the Times.

“Anyone who goes to the gate, they either arrest him or kill him,” said Moussa al-Shaer, Tuqu’s mayor. “The settlers are working on the ground to make a new reality.”

Further immiseration

In an action aimed at immiserating the lives of West Bank Palestinians even further, Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on June 13 that $35 million in tax revenue, collected by Israel and intended for the Palestinian Authority, will be diverted to the families of Israeli victims of terrorism, according to the New York Times.

Smotrich is an extreme rightist who now has authority in the Netanyahu government over much of the West Bank. He is responsible for undermining even the few legal protections that exist on paper for Palestinians.

According to The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel, a detailed investigative report in the May 16 New York Times Magazine, “Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, the head of Israel’s Central Command, responsible for the West Bank, gave a withering account of the efforts by Bezalel… to undermine law enforcement in the occupied territory. Since Smotrich took office, Fox wrote, the effort to clamp down on illegal settlement construction has dwindled ‘to the point where it has disappeared. Moreover, Fox said, Smotrich and his allies were thwarting the very measures to enforce the law that the government had promised Israeli courts it would take.’”

That report documents the prominent role Israel’s ultraright has come to play in the government. “After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists,” it asserts, “lawlessness has become the law.”

Danger of all-out war in Lebanon

In recent weeks, international media have focused increased attention on the limited but dangerous war on the Israel-Lebanon border between Hezbollah and the IDF.

Southern Lebanon: BBC sees air strike destruction in deserted towns read the headline of an April 24 article by the British Broadcasting Corporation. “Spiraling tensions and cross-border strikes which have killed more than 70 civilians in Lebanon have turned parts of the south into ghost towns. Residents have fled, leaving their homes at risk of destruction,” it said.

According to the International Organization for Migration, about 90,000 Lebanese have been displaced from their homes, while Israel has evacuated about 80,000 people on its side of the border.

“For the second straight day, escalating violence raged across the Israel-Lebanon border,” reported The New York Times on June 14.

This escalation was, in part, a result of an Israeli strike that killed a top Hezbollah commander on June 11. Taleb Abdallah, also known as Abu Taleb, was among the highest-ranking Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon to have been killed in the eight-month-long conflict.

Writing in Haaretz on June 12, Amos Harel, who the daily considers a leading media expert on military and defense issues, observed, concerning this IDF action, “The assassination of Abdullah is an expression of a familiar pattern: an intelligence and operational opportunity crops up and a decision to assassinate is made, without necessarily taking into account all the strategic implications. 

“In early April, the assassination of Iranian Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi… in Damascus brought Israel to an unprecedented confrontation with Iran, in which 350 missiles and drones were launched at Israel by Iran and its proxies. This time, Iran is not part of the picture, but a further escalation with Hezbollah is possible,” Harel wrote.

Harel returned to this danger in a June 16 article. “On the basis of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior IDF officers’ declarations, it seems that they support intensifying the attacks. The question is whether these measures will necessarily deter Hassan Nasrallah and end the escalation or have the opposite result, to the point of deterioration into total war,” he wrote.

“To date, there is no evidence that the policy of extensive killings will restrain Hezbollah,” he warned. “Conversely, the Shia organization’s leaders declare they will not withdraw and intend to continue the attacks so long as the Israeli operation in Gaza continues.

“It is possible that Israel will ultimately have no choice but a war in the north,” wrote Harel, who is a critic but not an opponent of Israeli policy. “But those who preach it,” he warned again, “should take into account the expected vast damage to the Israeli home front (including the center of the country) from Hezbollah’s tens of thousands of rockets and missiles and the IDF’s difficulty in deploying its forces on two fronts.

“Some assessments, that the IDF will fairly easily overcome Hezbollah in southern Lebanon,” he added, “sound divorced from reality and rely on a false reading of Israeli military strength.”

Concerned about this prospect, Biden dispatched his special Mideast envoy Amos Hochstein to Jerusalem on June 18. His message conveyed Washington’s concern that Iran is “part of the picture.”

“In his meetings with Israeli officials, Hochstein warned that war with Hezbollah could lead to a wide-scale Iranian attack on Israel of a kind that would be difficult for Israel’s defense systems to repel, in concert with possible wide-scale fire by Hezbollah from Lebanon,” Haaretz reported.

The specter of such an escalation in Lebanon, the growing wave of IDF and settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza guarantee that the current crisis in the Mideast will grind on for the foreseeable future.

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