It’s blindingly apparent Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t need a ceasefire in Gaza or Lebanon or wherever else – not but, at the least. The Biden administration and Keir Starmer’s authorities can stick with the politically handy fiction that final week’s killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar has opened a window to peace if they have to. Nevertheless it’s nonsense. Israel’s prime minister violently rampages about like a drunken hooligan armed with a stack of US and UK-supplied bricks. He loves the sound of breaking glass.
The unpalatable fact is Netanyahu, his far-right allies and dismayingly massive numbers of Israeli residents imagine, foolishly, that they’re successful the struggle that Hamas started on 7 October final 12 months and that Israel has since relentlessly, criminally expanded. They view Sinwar’s dying, after a latest string of high-profile assassinations, as the newest vindication of Netanyahu’s slash-and-burn coverage – although it can inevitably backfire finally. His subsequent goal? Iran.
What’s Netanyahu considering? He’s aiming for max power, attain and leverage, partially to guard himself politically down the road. Israel has intensified navy operations in northern Gaza although Hamas is decapitated, disorganised and lowered to random acts of resistance. As ordinary, he’s blissful to take the worldwide flak ensuing from excessive civilian casualties in devastated locations corresponding to Jabalia. Why? As a result of whereas he has no coherent plan for the “day after” in Gaza, Netanyahu is bent on maximising Israeli management and his personal place previous to the day when he, not Joe Biden or anybody else, decides to cease taking pictures.
Netanyahu has rejected the recommendation of Israeli navy chiefs, in addition to from the Individuals, that Sinwar’s killing needs to be exploited to get a hostage deal, Haaretz reported. A senior Israeli hostage negotiator instructed the paper: “To a big extent, we’re in the identical scenario. The assassination didn’t create flexibility. The objectives of the struggle haven’t modified with regard to ending Hamas’s rule. Consequently, the orders given to the defence institution additionally haven’t modified.” On Hamas’s aspect, too, there was no shift, the negotiator mentioned.
Comparable Israeli intransigence is obvious in Lebanon, the place airstrikes on Beirut and different cities, and territorial advances, have intensified because the killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah. On Monday Israeli forces prolonged their strikes to non-military targets.
In an indication of his contempt for the peacemakers, Netanyahu has proven no compunction about taking his struggle to the UN, each politically – final month he delivered a shamefully offensive, bellicose speech to the final meeting – and militarily, via assaults on Unifil, the UN pressure in Lebanon. Peacekeepers have been injured. Lebanon’s military, one other non-combatant pressure, has been hit too.
Amos Hochstein, the US peace envoy, who arrived in Beirut on Monday, is pushing for a ceasefire on the premise of UN safety council decision 1701, which established the dividing line between the 2 sides within the 2006 Lebanon struggle. There may be discuss of making a brand new worldwide pressure to safe the Israel-Lebanon border. In the meantime Israel is claimed to be demanding a future proper to re-intervene within the nation, on the bottom and within the air, every time it feels threatened.
These latter calls for are unacceptable to any sovereign state, nevertheless enfeebled. However they replicate the Israeli chief’s total method. As in Gaza, so in Lebanon. Netanyahu, understanding he can not resist worldwide strain indefinitely, seems intent on doing as a lot harm to Hezbollah, militarily and organisationally, as he probably can, whereas he can, and gaining as a lot floor, pending an finish to hostilities on beneficial phrases, ideally dictated by him.
It’s not possible to not really feel sorry for Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state. In pursuit of Biden’s delusional perception that Sinwar’s killing is a chance, and never one other milestone on the highway to hell, Blinken has been ordered to undertake yet one more spherical of what the Individuals amusingly name Center East peacemaking this week. He arrived in Tel Aviv at present as air raid sirens sounded, with Hezbollah claiming to have bombed town.
However Blinken carries no sticks, solely carrots – and Netanyahu is a carnivore. For Netanyahu, talks with Blinken imply listening to what he has to say, agreeing it’s a good suggestion, then carrying on regardless as quickly as his customer’s again is turned.
Primary actuality verify: the primary focus of Blinken’s journey will not be Gaza and even Lebanon. It’s about limiting the targets, damaging energy and escalatory, probably nuclear-related insanity of Israel’s imminent retaliatory strike towards Iran – following Tehran’s 181 ballistic missile assault earlier this month. Quantity two actuality verify: Blinken and Netanyahu each know that Biden is not going to critically attempt to rein in Israel earlier than the 5 November US election. There will probably be no arms cut-off, no punitive sanctions that would lose votes for Democrats.
Biden’s greatest concern proper now could be an explosive, out-of-control confrontation between Iran and Israel, this week or subsequent, that sucks US forces into one other Center East quagmire simply earlier than voters select between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The US election is Netanyahu’s true horizon. That is what he’s wanting in the direction of. For this reason, unchecked, he’ll proceed to do no matter he likes, and extra so, in each Gaza and Lebanon for the subsequent two weeks at the least.
If Harris wins, the US could also be higher positioned to impose phrases, on condition that Harris ostensibly feels strongly in regards to the humanitarian price of the struggle – although doing so would require the political will that’s presently missing. If victory goes to Trump, a likeminded hard-right, anti-Palestinian hawk, Netanyahu will be capable to money in his chips when he chooses, insisting from his present place of power on the timing, phrases and form of any truces and subsequent longer-term settlement.
That is what Netanyahu is considering, this is the reason he is not going to ponder a ceasefire now. Besides neither he nor anybody else is aware of what Iran will do whether it is attacked on the alarming scale implied by leaked US briefing papers. Netanyahu the brutal, reckless chancer is taking his visceral, countless brinkmanship too far. Within the coming days, his murderous sport could lastly blow up in his and Israel’s face.
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Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s overseas affairs commentator
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