US President Joe Biden’s repeated declaration that he is a “Zionist” raises the question of what form of mediation a Zionist can undertake between the occupation and the resistance in Palestine, at a time when his administration is militarily, politically and mediatically involved in the war on the Gaza Strip.
The paradox becomes even stranger with the accumulation of evidence of the American role’s lack of integrity and neutrality, as described by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Iran, and many analysts and observers.
While this also raises questions about the possibility of this mediation reaching a result in the foreseeable future, if its current framework continues, in which the US administration plays a central role.
The position of the valuer
Statements by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran show their loss of confidence in any honest US role in mediating to stop the war on the besieged Strip.
Hamas leader Osama Hamdan accused both US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “deception, lying and buying time to continue the genocide in the Gaza Strip” by claiming that there is progress in the negotiations and that Israel agrees to approach the content of the mediators’ initiatives, in statements to Tel Aviv Tribune.
Another Hamas leader, Bassem Naim, explained this in a statement to the Associated Press on August 21, 2024, saying that the new American proposal “adopted several new demands from Netanyahu, including the continued presence of Israeli forces in Rafah, Philadelphi and Netzarim, and the inspection of displaced Palestinians returning to northern Gaza.”
Naim points out that the proposal also includes unspecified changes to the exchange of Israeli prisoners for Palestinians, and does not guarantee that the ceasefire will remain in place during negotiations on moving from the first phase of the deal to the second phase.
While previous versions of the ceasefire plan included a clause stating that the second phase would include a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
This comes at a time when the US administration is spreading an atmosphere of optimism without providing any evidence that the Israeli position is getting closer to previous offers to stop the war, through public statements and leaks to the media.
Axios also quoted American officials on August 16, 2024, saying that some progress was made during the first day of the latest round of negotiations in Doha.
Hamas’s narrative is reinforced by the Associated Press’s report, which quoted an Egyptian official with direct knowledge of the negotiations as saying that the proposal to “bridge the gap” includes implementing the first phase of the deal, which calls for “Hamas to release civilian prisoners.” The parties would then negotiate the second and third phases during the first phase without “guarantees” for Hamas from Israel or the mediators.
The Egyptian official says, “The Americans are offering promises, not guarantees, and Hamas will not accept this, because it practically means that Hamas will release civilian prisoners in exchange for a cessation of fighting for six weeks, without guarantees for a permanent ceasefire through negotiation.”
He points out that the proposal does not clearly state that Israel will withdraw its forces from two strategic corridors in Gaza, namely the Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt, and the Netzarim Corridor from east to west across the area. The Egyptian official adds, “Israel is offering to reduce its forces in the Philadelphi Corridor with promises to withdraw from the area, and this is unacceptable to us and of course to Hamas.”
Commenting on this, the spokesman for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Ali Naeini, described the American mediation as “hypocritical.” On August 20, Iranian television quoted him as saying, “We do not believe that the Americans want peace and a ceasefire, and what they are doing is basically a political game.”
Israelis are surprised!
The level of American bias toward the Israeli prime minister is so clear that it is causing refusal among Israeli officials seeking to reach an agreement to return their prisoners in Gaza. According to what was reported by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on August 21, informed Israeli sources accused the US Secretary of State of sabotaging the ceasefire negotiations in the Gaza Strip, and say that he called them a “death sentence.”
The newspaper quoted sources – described as informed without naming them – as saying that “Blinken made a very serious mistake by saying that Netanyahu accepted the American proposal, and the ball is now in Hamas’s court.” It considered that the US Secretary of State “seriously sabotaged the negotiations, and made a very serious mistake, and this indicates naivety and lack of understanding.”
Sources explained that Blinken “instilled optimism for internal American political considerations, so that the Democratic Party conference in Chicago would proceed smoothly.”
She added, “But senior officials in the Israeli negotiating team who listened to his press conference wanted to dispel these speculations, after Blinken issued a death sentence on the deal, sided with Netanyahu and presented him with a gift.”
She stressed that “there will be no agreement or summit if Israel continues to insist on deploying forces along the Philadelphi Corridor” on the border between Gaza and Egypt.
The same sources say, “What Blinken’s words mean is that the United States is providing support to Netanyahu to keep Israeli army forces in Philadelphia, while the Egyptians and Hamas reject that.”
She asserts that expectations were that Blinken “would call on Israel and Hamas to be flexible,” but instead he “embraced Netanyahu and distanced himself from Hamas.”
Blinken had previously said, after meeting Netanyahu in Israel – as part of a tour that also took him to Egypt and Qatar – that Netanyahu had agreed to the deal proposal, holding Hamas responsible for the failure of the negotiations.
Mediation on the rhythm of elections
In his analysis of the American position, Adam McConnell, a professor of history at Turkey’s Sabanci University, believes that “the Biden administration is facing the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that wants to end American military aid to Israel.”
McConnell explains that since last October, this administration has sought to present an appearance based on two fundamentally contradictory positions. On the one hand, its officials present the United States as a mediator capable of finding common ground between Hamas and the Israeli government, and Biden may offer “soft” criticism of Israel’s excessive violence against the people of Gaza.
On the other hand, while giving priority to enhancing the chances of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris winning the presidential elections next November, the Biden administration – which does not want to anger the Zionist lobby and is aware of the extent of its influence on the course of the elections – does not hide the announcement of the continuation of providing military aid to Israel.
Simply put, the potential electoral backlash has prevented—and continues to prevent—any serious pressure being applied to the Netanyahu government, and in fact, the military aid file represents the only serious leverage this administration has against the Israeli leadership.
In light of the above facts, an impartial observer – according to McConnell’s article in Anadolu Agency – might find the claim that Washington could act as a mediator between the two sides “clearly absurd.” No current US official with significant decision-making power, he said, can bear the political consequences of taking meaningful action to rein in the Israeli leadership.
So after 10 months of “pretending to be honest,” Blinken is finally shedding the remaining flimsy pretenses of neutrality or fairness, and focusing on pressuring Hamas to accept the current ceasefire proposals, which are a retreat from previous American and Israeli positions. The basic truth is that American politicians cannot and will not be able to bring the Israeli government to adopt a rational negotiating position.
This is confirmed by Harris’s most recent statement—in an interview with CNN on August 30, regarding the supply of weapons to the occupying state—in which she reiterates her support for what she calls “Israel’s right to defend itself” and answers “no” to a question about whether she would suspend arms deliveries to Israel if she wins the presidential election. She does not indicate any change in Biden’s policy on the matter.
Speaking to the Global Times, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the Middle East needs to change the negative role the US plays. Instead of solving the problem, it often creates it, formulates a policy based on its own interests and needs, and “uses the lives and well-being of the people in the Middle East as a tool to enhance its hegemony.”
“All parties in the Middle East know the US’s intentions very well, but they had no other options before,” Shen Yi points out.
Zionist motives
However, electoral motives alone may not be sufficient to explain this American rush to cover up the Israeli government’s intransigence in negotiations and its retreat from its previous positions, despite the threat this poses to the stability of the Middle East and the world, and consequently to vital American interests.
It may also be influenced by the subjective factors of the American president and some of the pillars of his administration, as Biden was the first American president to describe himself as a Zionist, which he has considered part of his identity since his visit to the occupying state in 1973, and his meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir, which he described as one of the most important meetings in his life.
Then, the young Senator Biden returned from Israel, so enthusiastic that he declared himself a “Zionist” and kept repeating this publicly, explaining each time that “you don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist.”
In 1982, Biden supported Menachem Begin’s government in its invasion of Lebanon, despite the deaths of many civilians. His enthusiasm reached such a point that Begin was the one who had to moderate his extremism, reminding Biden that any warring party is required to protect women and children!
Thus, it becomes clear that the United States’ behavior in mediation is inseparable from its military, security, and political involvement in the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, by providing the political atmosphere that enables Israel to restore deterrence and inflict the greatest possible damage on the Palestinian people’s resistance, while reducing the political and military repercussions on the occupying state as a result of its crimes in the Strip.
Thus, the differences between the American and Israeli administrations are nothing more than differences in assessing the interests of the joint colonial project between the two parties, which is “Zionism,” and that these differences do not rise to the level of obstructing the fixed American path seeking to liquidate the Palestinian cause in favor of arranging a regional political, security, and economic structure that protects the interests of the occupation and the United States.
While these differences are being used to control the course of political mediation between the resistance and the occupation, and to prevent any parties that are not desired by the US from entering the mediation line.
In such a case, it is not worth waiting for the mediation in its current form to reach settlements that achieve the minimum demands of the Palestinian side, which means that stopping the war requires a different mediation framework that can constitute a guarantee and present balanced positions that may lead to stopping the massacre that has been going on for months.
Until then, the American promises to stop the war are worthless unless new pressure factors enter that force the Biden administration to seriously pressure the occupation to stop its ongoing aggression against the besieged Strip.