The US President Joe Biden’s push for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has so far led to further violence and threatens to spill over into a war with Lebanon. Washington appears either sleepy or willing to push the entire region off a cliff to avoid ditching its “unconditional support” for Israel.
Biden’s May 31 speech, in which he presented an Israeli ceasefire proposal and urged both Hamas and the Israeli government to accept it, gave hope that Washington was finally taking a stand. The US President provided what seemed to be a reasonable roadmap to secure a lasting cessation of hostilities in Gaza and a prisoner exchange.
Hamas viewed the speech “positively,” while still maintaining that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war were necessary for any proposal agreement. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stuck with his previous rhetoric about the need to destroy Hamas, indicated he would not agree to a ceasefire.
Netanyahu took things further by asserting that Joe Biden’s description of the Israeli ceasefire proposal was “not accurate,” also making it clear there would be no ceasefire until his war goals were achieved. Giving legitimacy to Netanyahu’s stance, an article in The Washington Post highlighted how The United States is providing weapons to Israel, despite its addition to a UN blacklist for killing Palestinian children.
The big problem this time around is that the continuation of the war will not only mean an escalation of the horrors in Gaza but is heading towards a massive conflagration with Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah possesses missile capabilities to respond to Israeli airstrikes with devastating effect that could lead to the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of Israelis.
Under great domestic pressure to launch an assault on Lebanese territory, Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be closer to opening a catastrophic conflict with Lebanon instead of concluding a ceasefire and prisoner exchange with Gaza. In his eyes, a war with Lebanon could even provide the perfect lethal distraction that would enable him to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza but at the expense of triggering a much larger and deadlier war.