Mouin Rabbani is a non-resident fellow at DAWN. He is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
Amid much fanfare, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week announced that, after "constructive" discussions with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister had accepted the latest White House proposal for a Gaza cease-fire and exchange of captives. In Blinken's words, "It's now incumbent on Hamas to do the same, and then the parties, with the help of the mediators—the United States, Egypt and Qatar—have to come together and complete the process of reaching clear understandings about how they'll implement the commitments that they've made under this agreement."
Given that the document Blinken claimed he had persuaded Netanyahu to accept had been advertised as a "bridging proposal" to implement a cease-fire initiative first proposed by President Joe Biden in late May, the reference to further negotiations to "complete the process" requires some explanation.
One interpretation would be that Washington wants to leave nothing to chance, ensuring it has crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's on Biden's May initiative before proclaiming success in bringing the hostilities to an end and achieving an exchange of captives.
Another explanation, more consistent with reality, is that the negotiations for a cease-fire that began early this year are a diversionary U.S.-Israeli charade that shouldn't be taken particularly seriously. Initially, their primary purpose was to serve as a fig leaf for Israel to continue with its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip. In other words, their purpose is process, and their objective is to avoid reaching a cease-fire agreement, rather than actually concluding one and ending this war.
It is an Oslo process for genocide, if you will. Oslo served as the essential fig leaf enabling Israel to intensify settlement expansion and annexationist policies, while Washington ran interference for Israel with a "peace process" that was, in the words of Palestinian diplomat Afif Safieh, "all process and no peace." Just like Oslo, these cease-fire talks are designed to go nowhere.
It is an Oslo process for genocide, if you will. Just like Oslo, Gaza cease-fire talks are designed to go nowhere.
- Mouin Rabbani
For those who may not recall the 1990s, Washington typically rebuffed international criticism of Israeli policy with the argument that its "peace process" would resolve the matter at hand, and any efforts to hold Israel accountable for its actions would derail diplomacy. The Gaza cease-fire negotiations have a more specific purpose than buying time for Israel to snatch an unattainable military victory from the closing jaws of failure. And this is to forestall—and failing that, to minimize to the extent possible—any retaliation by Iran, Hezbollah and their coalition partners for Israel's recent spate of assassinations and bombings in the region.
Washington's position is that neither Iran, nor Lebanon, nor indeed any other state in the region, has a right to defend itself against Israeli attack, or any right to respond to Israeli attack. Israel, by contrast, has not only a right to be protected from the repercussion of its actions, but also the right to respond, as it sees fit, to any reprisals provoked by its actions.
Perhaps the only consistent U.S. position since October 7 has been its opposition to regional escalation beyond Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet Washington's problem is that it has consistently declined to use either its influence or power to prevent such escalation. And when it has, the Biden administration has been ineffective.
There have only been two exceptions thus far. In early October, Israel was reportedly on the verge of launching a massive attack against Lebanon to strike a blow against Hezbollah, which had just started its war of attrition along Lebanon's border with Israel. Biden, recognizing Israel would be biting off far more than it was in a position to chew, counseled Netanyahu against doing so. Netanyahu called it off, reportedly after the Israeli Air Force had already taken to the skies. It took only a phone call.
About a month later, a series of powerful U.S. air raids against militias in Iraq that had been firing increasingly lethal drones and missiles at Israel, as well as at American bases in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, led these groups to announce a cessation of their attacks against U.S. facilities. Their attacks against Israel, however, continued, and they have more recently also resumed shelling U.S. forces.
By contrast, Operation Prosperity Guardian—the joint American and British naval task force conducting regular air raids on Yemen to deter the Houthis from attacking shipping in the Red Sea—has been an abject failure. The Houthi attacks have continued, shipping largely continues to avoid the Suez Canal, and the Israeli port of Eilat recently declared bankruptcy. Similarly, the deployment of two U.S. aircraft carriers to the Eastern Mediterranean in October to deter Hezbollah from maintaining its "support front" in southern Lebanon failed in any way to discourage the Lebanese militia from keeping up its border attacks.
The primary reason for this U.S. failure has been Washington's unwillingness to use its leverage with Israel to end its genocidal campaign in Gaza, which would give Hezbollah, the Houthis and other "support fronts" the strongest incentive to end their attacks. Alternatively, the Biden administration has been unwilling to commit the American blood and treasure that would be required to terminate these support fronts itself. That's of course assuming the U.S. can succeed where Israel has failed, and that U.S. counterinsurgency strategy has improved by leaps and bounds since the failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The main challenge to current U.S. efforts to prevent further regional escalation are the vows of Hezbollah and Iran to retaliate against Israel independently of developments in Gaza. Whether, when, where and how they will respond is at best speculation. It could consist of anything from a coordinated attack against Israel, to a single high-profile operation, to Tehran crossing the nuclear threshold.
Washington is taking these threats sufficiently seriously that it believes cease-fire negotiations will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Israel's adversaries to retaliate, if in so doing they end up saddled with responsibility for derailing an initiative to end the war against the Palestinians in Gaza. It also gives the U.S. and Israel more time to prepare for an eventual expansion of the war. That's pretty much the sole reason the negotiations have resumed with such fanfare this month.
However unlikely, it's not inconceivable that Israel's adversaries have either decided not to respond, or postponed their response indefinitely. It may also be the case that they have not responded because they are still preparing their reprisals. But the most plausible explanation is that Biden for once read the room correctly and that the anticipated response from the self-styled Axis of Resistance was postponed to determine if Washington was finally prepared to rein in its Israeli proxy and end the collective punishment of Gaza.
As with Oslo, the purpose here is process, not its conclusion with an agreement that ends Israel's destruction of Gaza.
- Mouin Rabbani
The elephant in the negotiating room, of course, is Israel, specifically Netanyahu. As even his own defense minister and the negotiators that Netanyahu has personally appointed have now made clear, the Israeli prime minister does not want a deal and is the obstacle to one being concluded—to such an extent that he has sabotaged the U.S. initiative that, according to Biden, was presented to him by Netanyahu himself. Initially convinced that Hamas would reject it, Netanyahu was blindsided when the Palestinians on July 2 announced their acceptance of the proposal. Netanyahu responded by adding new conditions that had not been part of his initiative announced by Biden.
To square this circle, and with the threat of regional war looming large, Biden on August 9 sought to demonstrate seriousness of purpose by personally signing, along with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, a statement that called for "immediate relief" for the Palestinians in Gaza, and for captives and hostages and their families. According to the communique, the three leaders had "forge[d] a framework agreement that is now on the table with only the details of implementation left to conclude … There is no further time to waste nor excuses from any party for further delay."
Anticipating further U.S.-Israeli subterfuge, Hamas announced it would not participate in further negotiations because the initiative had already been negotiated and, at the Biden administration's insistence, endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. Rather, Hamas called upon the mediators to formulate a plan to implement the cease-fire and present it to the parties. After all, the August 9th communique had stated that the U.S., Egypt and Qatar "are prepared to present a final bridging proposal that resolves the remaining implementation issues in a manner that meets the expectations of all parties."
In American English, "immediate" and "no further time to waste" apparently means you issue a statement on August 9 and call an "urgent meeting" almost a week later, on August 15. As for the "final bridging proposal," as indicated by Blinken's statement last week, it still predictably remains a vague work in progress.
Recognizing that any negotiations on Israel's new conditions would blow up the entire process, and with it the Middle East, the U.S. instead incorporated new Israeli demands as so-called clarifications to the initiative previously announced by Biden. Put simply, the U.S. is shifting the goal posts so that it can claim Israel has responded positively, even though Netanyahu has yet to confirm Blinken's claim of Israeli acceptance. The Biden administration can then blame the Palestinians for rejecting this deal and vow to continue "negotiating" like this until an elusive cease-fire is reached.
As with Oslo, the purpose here is process, not its conclusion with an agreement that ends Israel's destruction of Gaza. And as with Oslo, which in 2000 produced the Second Intifada because the charade became impossible to conceal further, the cease-fire process is producing diminishing returns. If last week's negotiations successfully forestalled reprisals by Hezbollah and Iran, that success was very short-lived. On August 16, Hezbollah unveiled a sophisticated bunker complex, seemingly impervious to either U.S. or Israeli deep-penetration bombs.
Perhaps for this reason, a "senior U.S. official" was quoted the next day by The Times of Israel, warning Iran of "cataclysmic" consequences if it struck Israel in response to its killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. That American official is presumably fully aware that "cataclysmic" is typically code for WMD, not the assassination of senior officials. We'll find out soon enough if the threat has any impact.
Then, sure enough, on August 25, Hezbollah launched its anticipated response to Israel's assassination in late July of Fuad Shukr, its senior military commander. In an address that same day, Hezbollah's General Secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, indicated that the attack had been prepared some time ago but was delayed to assess whether or not the U.S. would seriously pursue a Gaza cease-fire. Having concluded that the negotiations were a charade, Hezbollah apparently came to the conclusion that its retaliation would not derail the cease-fire process, since that process isn't really seeking a cease-fire at all. Hezbollah's coalition partners in the "Axis of Resistance" have presumably reached a similar judgement.
