O
n 14 January, US President Joe Biden released a statement in which he commemorated a “devastating and tragic milestone,” being the “100 days of captivity for more than 100 innocent people,” among them as many as six Americans in captivity in Gaza.
The statement referred to what it termed “aggressive diplomacy” by the White House to free those hostages. It recalled the deal brokered by Egypt, Qatar, and Israel last November, in close coordination with the US administration, whereby 105 hostages were released. Strangely enough, it did not mention that this deal also freed more than 200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons.
Biden pledged to maintain “close contact with my counterparts in Qatar, Egypt, and Israel to return all the hostages home.”
I went over this statement several times looking for a few words of empathy or compassion for the more than 100,000 Palestinians killed or wounded in the last 100 days of the Israeli aggression against more than two million Palestinians in Gaza. Tellingly and regrettably enough, there were none.
Sadly and tragically, on the same day as the release of the statement the military spokesman of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas said that some of the hostages had become unaccounted for and had possibly died under the Israeli bombardments of Gaza. If this is the case, and I hope that it is not on strictly humanitarian grounds that have nothing to do with the nationality or the religious affiliation of the hostages, then the fault lies squarely with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Middle East warmonger, and the US president.
The former must be blamed because of his ill-fated, ill-conceived, and unrestrained strategy of defeating Hamas, something that he will not succeed in achieving, and the latter must be blamed because he has still not made up his mind when the time will be ripe to end the war in Gaza.
I am afraid that the longer the war goes on, the fewer will be the hostages that remain alive. Wars and armed conflicts always eventually come to an end, but it is difficult to tell whether the Israeli and the US governments have any ideas about when and how this will be true of the war on Gaza.
The Israelis say that it will last until it has achieved its objectives, with these apparently being shared by the Biden administration and including destroying Hamas, bringing the hostages home, and making sure that Hamas, or any other Palestinian resistance movement, does not repeat the 7 October attacks on southern Israel.
However, it seems that the Israelis and the Americans have been pursuing contradictory paths in managing the war on Gaza and its regional repercussions. The last 100 days have proven without a doubt that the declared objectives of the Israeli war in Gaza are difficult to achieve. Have the Americans also grasped this conclusion? It is hard to tell at present.
From day one of the conflict, one major priority for the White House has been to prevent the war on Gaza from spilling over to the rest of the region. In order to do so, a US armada was deployed in the eastern Mediterranean with warnings to anyone it might concern, principally Iran and the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah, not to get involved on the side of the Palestinian resistance movements battling the Israelis in Gaza.
Moreover, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who concluded his fourth trip to the Middle East over the last 100 days last week, and US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, who came to the Middle East twice in the same period, have carried one persistent message to the effect that any military escalation will have consequences and also will not benefit any party.
However, there is something Washington has failed to see. The longer the war lasts, the more serious is the danger of a military escalation. For one reason or another, this message has been lost on Washington. The result has been that the Houthi group in Yemen has started attacking ships en route to Israeli ports through the Red Sea in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians battling the Israeli military in Gaza.
As a result, the regional escalation that the Americans have been warning against has already gripped the Middle East and the Red Sea.
On 11 January, Biden ordered US military strikes against Houthi military targets in Yemen, and the Houthis vowed retaliation, this time against US and British warships in the region. The strikes were launched jointly with British forces with additional support from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Bahrain. These four countries, together with the Republic of Korea, the UK, and the US, released a statement on 11 January saying that the aim of the strikes is to de-escalate “tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea.”
It should be noted in passing that one day earlier, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2722 calling on the Houthis to cease their attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea. After the attacks against the Houthis, it is doubtful, at least for now, that diplomacy will have a chance to persuade them to abide by this UN Security Council resolution.
The Biden administration has some serious soul-searching to do if it is really worried about the Israeli war on Gaza engulfing the region. However, one word would do it – a ceasefire in Gaza.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 18 January, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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