Strong US-Israel relations vital to solve Mid-East conflict
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden weekend decision to return hostage negotiators to talks with Egyptian and Qatari intermediaries who are in contact with Hamas is, hopefully, an encouraging sign he recognises the need for urgent action to shore up his government’s vital relationship with the Biden White House. Mr Netanyahu’s outrage last week, when the US failed to do what it has done previously and use its veto to thwart a quixotic vote by the UN Security Council demanding a Gaza ceasefire, was understandable. The Arab-sponsored resolution was absurd. While it called for the release of the 130-plus hostages still being held by the barbaric Hamas terrorists, it failed to make doing so a precondition for a halt, or even a pause, in the fighting. Implausibly, too, the resolution said nothing about Hamas’s responsibility for the October 7 slaughter of Jews – the worst such pogrom since the Holocaust – which caused the war. But given the overriding need to do whatever it takes to secure the hostages’ release, Mr Netanyahu’s response to the UN resolution, including the hasty recall of hostage negotiators, went too far.
For Israel, US support is indispensable, especially in seeking the hostages’ release, and it is imperative Mr Netanyahu’s return of his negotiators is indeed a definitive sign the crisis in the bilateral relationship is being bypassed. At no time in the almost 76 years since its foundation has the Jewish state’s relationship with the US been more important: it demands far better than the mutual animosity displayed after the Security Council vote. Both sides – Jerusalem no less than the White House – need to do better. Squabbling and bickering has played into the hands of Hamas and its Iranian masters.
Similarly critical are signs of a looming wider regional war involving Iran’s Hezbollah terrorist proxy in Lebanon, a far more powerful and well-armed fighting force than Hamas. The weekend disclosure that an Australian soldier was among four unarmed military observers injured working for UNIFIL – the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon – after a shell exploded near them is symptomatic of rapidly escalating cross-border tensions. Hezbollah entering the conflict on a significant scale would create substantially greater challenges for Israel. The need for a strong, mutually supportive relationship between Jerusalem and Washington has seldom been more vital.