Given that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other US officials have repeatedly insisted that Hamas forms the sole obstacle to a ceasefire agreement, Palestinians could be forgiven for believing that day 213 of this genocidal ordeal would be the last.
The euphoria however proved short-lived. Several hours later the office of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that Israel’s war cabinet had unanimously agreed that the proposal “is far from Israel’s necessary requirements”,
Indeed, Israel’s Western-supplied and supported military launched intensive air and artillery strikes to support an incursion into Rafah that commenced shortly after Netanyahu’s announcement.
Ceasefire negotiations have been going on for some time, led by Egypt and Qatar, both of whom maintain working relationships with both Israel and Hamas. Egypt additionally has a close alliance with Israel, while Qatar hosts the Hamas leadership on its territory.
The United States is often identified as a mediator as well, but this is not quite accurate. Not only is it Israel’s chief sponsor in every sense of the word, but it also openly demands the destruction and elimination of Hamas, with whom it has neither contact nor communication.
Although it participates in the negotiations, as Blinken’s statements attest Washington serves primarily as a proxy for Israel rather than as what any reasonable observer would characterise as a mediator.
Given US power and US President Joe Biden’s unqualified support for Israel and its far-right government, the working assumption in Cairo and Doha has been that whatever Washington accepts will be translated into an Israeli endorsement.
It hasn’t quite worked out that way, and the main reason is that Biden and Blinken’s unmatched embrace of Israel and Israeli impunity in its dealings with the Palestinian people has extended to permitting Netanyahu to ride roughshod over US policy preferences without consequence.
So long as Blinken takes center stage in US Middle East diplomacy it can safely be ignored. Clueless as ever, on his most recent trip to the Middle East he once again prioritised a Saudi-Israeli normalisation agreement, which he appears to genuinely believe is imminent.
As for a ceasefire, he couldn’t restrain himself from praising Israel’s “extraordinarily generous” offer to pause its genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip for a few weeks, with mass killings resuming only after Israel safely retrieved its captives.
