Washington, DC – Holding an ice cream cone, US President Joe Biden said in February that a ceasefire in Gaza was so “close” that it could happen within days.
More than seven months later, Israel’s war on Gaza has not only continued, but expanded, with Israeli troops invading and bombing Lebanon as tensions and violence spill over across the Middle East .
The Biden administration has continued to verbally call for de-escalation while providing Israel with political support and a steady supply of bombs to support its wars.
Washington has welcomed almost all of Israel’s escalatory measures this year: the assassination of Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran, the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the invasion of southern Lebanon.
More than a year after the start of the war in Gaza, Israel continues its devastating offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory, which has left nearly 42,000 dead, while bombing Beirut daily and preparing an attack on Iran.
As the conflict in Gaza intensifies and spreads across the region, the gap between U.S. rhetoric and policy widens.
So is the Biden administration simply failing to rein in Israel – as many liberal commentators have suggested? Or is he actually responsible for the escalation, exploiting the chaos to advance a hawkish agenda against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah?
The short answer: With its continued military and diplomatic support for Israel, the United States remains a key driver of violence in the region despite its declarations of restraint and calls for a ceasefire, analysts say. While it is difficult to speculate on the administration’s motivations or true intentions, growing evidence shows that the Biden administration is on Israel’s side, not simply a passive ally that is being challenged.
What has the United States said and done so far?
After months of public pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza, the United States has shifted its focus to supporting the Israeli offensive in Lebanon.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week approved an Israeli ground campaign in southern Lebanon that risks turning into a full-scale invasion of the country.
“I have made it clear that the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself,” Austin said in a statement Sept. 30 after a call with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant.
“We agreed on the need to dismantle attack infrastructure along the border to ensure that Lebanese Hezbollah cannot carry out October 7-type attacks against communities in northern Israel,” Austin said. , referring to the attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on southern Israel in which at least 1,139 people were killed.
The Lebanese group began attacking Israeli military positions in October last year in what it said was an attempt to pressure the Israeli government to end its war on Gaza, which it had launched after the Hamas attack.
For months, almost daily clashes were largely limited to the border area. The violence has pushed tens of thousands of people to flee to both sides of the border. Hezbollah has argued that residents of northern Israel will only be able to return once the country ends its war against Gaza.
After a campaign of assassinations against senior Hezbollah military leaders, Israel launched a massive bombing campaign across Lebanon, destroying civilian homes in hundreds of villages and towns late on September 23.
Since then, Israeli violence has displaced more than a million people in Lebanon.
Before this Israeli escalation, the White House had been saying for months that it was working on a diplomatic solution to the crisis on the Lebanese-Israeli border. US envoy Amos Hochstein has visited the region several times, apparently to warn of escalation.
As low-level hostilities quickly escalated into all-out war in Lebanon, the Biden administration rallied Arab and European countries and proposed an “immediate” 21-day ceasefire on September 25 to end the fights.
Yet two days later, when Israel assassinated Nasrallah in a massive bombing that destroyed several residential buildings in Beirut and dashed any prospect of an imminent ceasefire, the White House welcomed the attack as a “measure of justice”. Nasrallah’s assassination was ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from American soil, where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Osamah Khalil, a history professor at Syracuse University, questioned the sincerity of Biden’s diplomatic efforts, raising doubt over media reports that Hochstein urged Israel to exercise restraint.
Khalil stressed that the United States had participated in and directly supported Israel’s actions in Gaza and the rest of the region, but that the Biden administration had used the ceasefire talks as a ploy of “political inner” to protect oneself from inner criticism.
“It was all negotiations for the sake of negotiations, especially as the war became more and more unpopular,” Khalil told Tel Aviv Tribune last month.
“Reshaping the Middle East”
Two recent US media reports appear to confirm Khalil’s assertion.
Politico reported on September 30, citing unidentified sources, that senior U.S. officials – including Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the National Security Council’s Middle East coordinator – had privately supported an Israeli military offensive against the Hezbollah.
“Behind the scenes, Hochstein, McGurk and other senior U.S. national security officials are describing Israeli operations in Lebanon as a historic moment – one that will reshape the Middle East for the better in the years to come,” reported the American publication.
Separately, Axios reported last week that the United States was trying to take advantage of Israel’s blows against Hezbollah by pushing for the election of a Washington-backed Lebanese president.
The Lebanese presidency has been vacant for almost two years, with parliament unable to find consensus to choose a new leader.
On Tuesday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller described the war in Lebanon as an “opportunity” to change the country politically. He said Washington wanted the Lebanese people to have “the ability to elect a new president (and) the ability to break the impasse that Hezbollah finds itself in in the country.”
Hezbollah and its allies control dozens of seats in Lebanon’s parliament thanks to free elections in the country.
Reshaping the region has always been a goal of the American neoconservative movement, which promotes support for Israel and the elevation of governments friendly to the United States through hawkish foreign policy and military interventions. This approach was most clearly visible under former US President George W. Bush.
In fact, during Bush’s tenure 18 years ago, when Israel fought its last major war with Hezbollah, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke of “birth pains.” of a new Middle East.
Khalil noted that many Bush-era neoconservatives are now affiliated with the Democratic Party and support Vice President Kamala Harris for president in the November election.
Harris praised the support of former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the principal architects of the so-called “war on terror” and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden himself supported the Iraq War. So did Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was then on the panel’s Democratic staff. McGurk was an advisor in the Bush White House and played a key role in the US occupation of Iraq, while Hochstein had previously served in the Israeli army.
“You have a neoconservative agenda within the Democratic administration,” Khalil said.
Failures in Gaza
As war rages in Lebanon and the world watches for a possible escalation between Iran and Israel, many analysts say Biden’s failure to end the war in Gaza is what has brought the region to this point. point.
Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center in Washington DC, also said the Biden administration’s unconditional support for the Netanyahu government was leading the entire region into the “unknown.”
In the year since the Gaza war began, Jahshan told Tel Aviv Tribune that the United States had shown “total blind support” not only for Israeli policies, but also “for Israeli excesses.” .
“This is the result of a unilateral policy that refused to accept any element of rationality from the start of this conflict,” he said.
Almost immediately after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Biden expressed his uncompromising support for the US ally.
He supported a “swift, decisive and overwhelming” Israeli response against Hamas. The White House also moved quickly to seek additional funds from Congress for military aid to Israel to help finance the war.
Washington has for months resisted calls for a ceasefire despite the growing humanitarian crisis, arguing that Israel had the “right” to attack Hamas.
Recent reporting by ProPublica and the Reuters news agency showed that the Biden administration received and ignored internal warnings about possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza and continued arms transfers to Israel.
As domestic and international discontent grew after Israel razed large parts of Gaza, displaced nearly all of the Palestinian territory’s 2.3 million residents and brought them to the brink of famine, Biden began to soften his tone.
In recent months, the United States has adopted the term “ceasefire” to call for an agreement that would see an end to fighting in Gaza and the release of Israeli captives held by Palestinian groups in the besieged enclave.
But it did little to pressure Netanyahu into accepting a deal.
Whether Biden and his aides actually wanted a ceasefire and failed to achieve it, or whether they used diplomatic pressure to distract from the horrors of the Israeli-backed war, the result is the same: a war that is spreading and tens of thousands of innocent people are victims of violence. killed.
“The evidence suggests that it is politically advantageous for them to say they support a ceasefire, but do nothing to ensure it,” said Ryan Costello, political director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). , a U.S.-based group that promotes U.S. diplomacy with Tehran.
Jahshan also said the Biden administration has failed to offer fair ceasefire proposals as it continues to arm Israel.
“What is the value of a ceasefire if those proposing it continue to offer tools of war to one side,” he said. “This is not a ceasefire; it is an invitation to continue the fight.