As US election looms, Biden aides struggle with Middle East wars

Tel Aviv, Israel: It is not where the Biden administration wants to be less than two weeks before the United States presidential election.

Israeli attacks with American-made bombs continue to wipe out Palestinian families in Gaza. The war in Lebanon is expanding. And Israel and Iran’s exchanges of direct attacks could escalate, following Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military sites early on Saturday.

With many progressive voters and Arab and Muslim Americans in battleground states furious at US President Joe Biden for his unwavering support of Israel’s offensives since the devastating Hamas assault last year, US officials had been desperate for some way to prod the Middle East towards stability.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv.Credit: AP

Then came Israel’s October 16 killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, which Biden officials saw as a fresh opportunity to try to achieve a rapid negotiated settlement to Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.

Less than three weeks before the election, Biden dispatched Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Middle East for that purpose. The trip this week, his 11th wartime visit to the region, had an improvised quality reflecting its last-minute origins: Blinken departed without a clear itinerary and cancelled a planned stop in Jordan before carrying on to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, unexpectedly, London. There, he met separately on Friday with officials from Lebanon, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

In Doha, Qatar, Blinken announced that US and Israeli negotiators would be returning to Qatar soon in an effort to revive hostage and cease-fire talks with Hamas.

Still, any hopes of a quick, post-Sinwar breakthrough were short-lived.

Blinken found no evidence that the Hamas leader’s death had left either Hamas or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ready to strike an immediate cease-fire deal in Gaza that would free the hostages held by Hamas.

Instead, Blinken flew out of a Middle East teetering on the brink of greater chaos and in a more precarious state than even in the aftermath of Hamas’ attacks on October 7, 2023, or during his last visit in September. The Israeli fighter jets assigned to strike Iran took off as Blinken’s plane was still crossing the Atlantic to Washington.

On his trip, Blinken’s focus now seemed to be on planning the management of a post-conflict Gaza that remains hard to envision.

“This is a moment for every country to decide what role it’s prepared to play and what contributions it could make in moving Gaza from war to peace,” Blinken told reporters in Doha. A necessary condition of ending the war in Gaza, he said, was “to make sure that we have the appropriate plans in place”.

If Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, have any hope that the warring parties will silence their guns before the US election, there was no sign that Blinken’s trip could pave the way for that. Netanyahu has no strong incentives to end any of the wars before the election.

Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, analysts say, the Biden administration’s diplomatic efforts have failed because its goals have run counter to those of both Netanyahu and Sinwar, and because Biden has been unwilling to withhold weapons from Israel as leverage.

“The Biden administration’s steadfast refusal or unwillingness to establish guardrails or redlines for Israel has led to the expansion of this war,” said Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University. “It’s clear to me that Benjamin Netanyahu realizes that he can do almost anything he wants and there will be zero consequences.”

US officials say they stand by Israel’s right to defend itself, and that Biden’s “bear hug” strategy of embracing Netanyahu has led to some shifts, however minor, in the Israeli leader’s tactical decision-making over the past year.

But the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, especially its north, has plunged to such dismal levels that Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin sent Israel’s government a written warning this month that it risks triggering a cutoff of US military aid. The Biden administration has given Israel until mid-November to increase aid to Gaza. On Friday, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, standing next to Blinken at a London hotel, said Israel was conducting “ethnic cleansing” in northern Gaza.

And he suggested that diplomacy was failing to make a real difference.

“It’s getting worse, unfortunately, every time we meet,” the Jordanian diplomat said, turning to address Blinken directly. “Not for lack of us trying, but because we do have an Israeli government that is not listening to anybody. And that has got to stop.”

In Lebanon, Israel continues to pound Hezbollah positions and, defying US admonitions, to strike targets in residential Beirut. The attacks have killed hundreds of women and children. A month ago, after the start of Israel’s offensive in Lebanon to disrupt Hezbollah rocket fire, the Biden administration tried and failed to get a cease-fire and has since stopped calling for an immediate halt to the fighting.

And the region is bracing for possible Iranian reprisals after Israel’s airstrikes Saturday, which were themselves a response to an October 1 Iranian ballistic missile barrage against Israel, the second such assault by Iran this year.

Israel’s use of its military might – and the civilian casualties that accompany it, including young Palestinians who burned alive in tents after an Israeli strike near a Gaza hospital – has left many Democrats wringing their hands.

Polls in the critical state of Michigan show a toss-up between Harris and former president Donald Trump, the Republican contender. Many Arab American voters there say they are repulsed by the Biden administration’s unceasing weapons shipments to Israel. Some Democrats believe that losing their votes could tip the state – and perhaps the entire election.

“As for Arab and Muslim voters, they view Harris as beyond redemption because of Gaza, and now Lebanon,” said Hashemi. “Most will be voting for a third-party candidate or they will be boycotting this election. Some might naively vote for Trump out of frustration.”

Trump has at times expressed total support for Israel, and he and Netanyahu share a transactional outlook. He and his aides enacted controversial policies during his administration that supported Netanyahu’s positions. But Trump has also called on Israel to “stop killing people” in Gaza.

It is not clear that Blinken ever believed that Sinwar’s death would leave Hamas more willing to trade its hostages for a cease-fire.

Some US officials say the better question is whether Netanyahu might now have the political cover to declare victory and end the Israel-Hamas war. As Blinken put it on Thursday, “Israel has accomplished the strategic goals that it set out for itself” after October 7, 2023.

But Netanyahu’s intentions remain opaque. He is on trial for corruption and widely blamed for Israel’s colossal security failure last year. He has become more popular recently because of Israel’s successful killings of militia leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah. Many US officials assess that he sees warfare as a means of political survival.

Blinken insisted the US and Israel would explore “new frameworks” for a cease-fire and hostage release. US officials said that could include piecemeal deals involving brief fighting pauses for the release of just a few hostages at a time.

But during his trip, Blinken sounded more focused on a phase still well beyond the horizon: the security, governance and reconstruction of Gaza after Israel’s military withdraws from the territory, whenever that might be.

For Israel to feel confident about a withdrawal, some kind of security force – perhaps composed of units from neighbouring Arab militaries – would need to be in place, US officials say. Someone would have to pay tens of billions to begin rebuilding from the rubble of Gaza. Biden and his aides have said the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority should govern the territory, if it replaces its aging leadership — a proposal that Netanyahu rejects.

Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv that Netanyahu had firmly denied to him that Israel’s military was pursuing a strategy of pushing civilians out of northern Gaza. According to that strategy, the military would try to starve out or kill anyone who remained, on the grounds that they are Hamas holdouts.

But starvation has been under way for months, across the population. Last month, levels of aid delivery dropped to the lowest since the start of the war. The death toll from bombings is still rising, and the images of Palestinian civilians burning in refugee tent camps have circulated widely.

To try to head off an even bigger conflagration. Biden warned Netanyahu not to hit Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites or its oil facilities, which could drive up gas prices before the US election.

Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, announced on Wednesday that he had told air force crews that after their planned attack, “everyone will understand your might”.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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