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By Lev Tsitrin- published in New English Review
The first one was that the announcement happened at all, given that just a week before it Secretary Blinken bitterly complained to his staff that “fresh proposals to broker a cease-fire and secure the release of hostages held by Hamas [were being leaked to the press]. Those leaks made tricky negotiations even harder.” And suddenly, Biden himself makes this “harder” part so much harder yet, by announcing the entire thing to the press — in essence, sabotaging Blinken (and revealing who the leaker was in the first place, for that matter).
The second oddity was the timing, about 9pm Israel time on a Friday — i.e. Jewish sabbath, as if calculated to pre-empt Israel’s immediate corrective reaction so as to let the world absorb this as Israel’s actual offer to end the war immediately — even though just the day prior, Israel’s national security adviser estimated that the war will last at least till the end of the year.
Well, the sun rose on the new day, the papers put out their reports, and we now know the official Israeli response — “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,”
So much for the “Israeli” plan announced by Biden — the plan that would keep Hamas in power because from now on it will behave. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” This is not a direct quote from Biden’s speech, but describes its gist pretty well.
Netanyahu is not buying it — for a good reason. After all, Biden has his own reasons for calming the Middle East that have nothing whatsoever to do with the Middle East. Elections looming ahead, he wants to bring back into the fold the anti-Israel camp of the Democratic party. He needs votes of those who camped on college campuses, of those who checked the “uncommitted” box in the Democratic primary ballots.
Well, Netanyahu is often being accused of dragging the war for personal reasons, so he could remain in power — and now Biden has the rationale attributed to Netanyahu in wanting to end the war, even if Hamas stays in power, too. Not only is this blatantly hypocritical, the kettle calling the pot black — but at least Netanyahu has clear strategic goal of restoring Israel’s military control over the terrorist enclave, while Biden is perfectly willing to let the terrorists stay in control in wide swath of lands, urging Israel to adopt America’s failures in Afghanistan and Iraq which it ceded to Islamists, touting American retreats as successes.
Which raises a question: does Biden know the good from the bad? Of course he does: staying in office is good, being voted out is bad. When it comes to Netanyahu, this same reasoning does not apply, of course: Netanyahu’s persistence in leading the country is treated (by Senator Schumer, among others) as essentially treasonous, but it is all fine and good when Biden is doing it.
Clearly, “every one for himself and the devil take the hindmost” is the name of the political play being acted before our eyes by Biden — and if the “hindmost” destined to go to the devil is Israel, so be it, as long as Biden stays in office. Luckily for Israel, Netanyahu is of a different mind, and sticks to the actual Israeli plan, not the “plan” touted by Biden in on a Sabbath night in defiance of Blinken, the “plan” that puts Biden’s victory at the American ballot box over the Israeli victory on the Gaza battlefield. It may be a fine “plan” — but not so fast, President Biden!
