On 24 July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to make a controversial statement before the US Congress to defend his brutal and destructive war on Gaza that has killed over 38,000 people and left over 186,000 wounded over the past nine months.
The invitation to Netanyahu to address the US legislators is highly controversial. Several members of Congress have asked for the speech to be cancelled. US Senator Bernie Sanders said he will not attend the speech and has called for more serious attention to be paid to the situation in Gaza where Israel has fallen far short of observing basic international law.
However, according to Arab diplomatic sources, including one in the US capital, there seems to be little that the opposing voices to Netanyahu’s speech can do to stop the expected wave of support that the Israeli prime minister is likely to see in Washington, even if this is coupled with some carefully worded statements on the need for humanitarian aid to be processed into Gaza and civilians to be spared.
This week, at the same time that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was telling Israeli officials visiting Washington that the death toll in Gaza had become “unacceptable”, Washington decided to end the suspension on supplying 500-pound bombs to Israel but to keep the ban on 2,000-pound bombs.
The decision came after Israel had launched five strikes in eight days on designated safe havens in Gaza, including its attack on Saturday on Khan Younis where 90 people died and 300 others were wounded, with no possibility of their receiving adequate treatment due to the severe shortage of medicine and medical supplies. Israel also attacked a UN-run school in Al-Mawasi on Sunday, a deprived zone in Gaza that Israel designated as a safe haven for Palestinian civilians less than a month ago.
“I think one of the key things Netanyahu wants is for the US to reverse all the suspensions that it has imposed on armaments to Israel, and the indications are that this is going to happen,” said the Washington-based Arab diplomat. He added that it would not be surprising if Netanyahu gets the support of the US Congress on most if not all of his armament requirements.
Two days prior to his statement before the US Congress, Netanyahu is expected to meet with US President Joe Biden at the White House. The meeting will not negate the tension between the two men, the result of what the US thinks is a systematic attempt by Netanyahu to block the increasingly slim chances of a ceasefire in Gaza.
According to an informed Egyptian official, it is also unlikely that the White House meeting will get Netanyahu to show more flexibility on the ceasefire deal that has been “on again, off again for months now due to the lack of political will on the side of Netanyahu,” he commented.
Since the brief one-week truce that Egypt, Qatar, and the US secured in November last year, five weeks after the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza on 7 October, there has been no further ceasefire. Other projected truces, including one that Biden himself had promised in March ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, failed to materialise.
Cairo-based Western diplomatic sources say that with all the troubles he has been facing over his cognitive health, his miserable performance in the TV debate with former president Donald Trump, the Republican Party candidate in the presidential elections, and increasingly vocal concerns within his own constituency over his chances of being re-elected in November, Biden is in no place to put pressure on Netanyahu to end the war.
According to one of these diplomats, it seems that Netanyahu is acting on the assumption that Biden is already on his way out of the White House and Trump is on his way back in. This, the diplomat argued, will not make Netanyahu responsive to any pressure that comes from Biden to end the war on Gaza “despite the concessions that Hamas has made.”
Sources informed on the open-ended talks that have been hosted and facilitated by Cairo and Doha say that during the past few weeks Hamas gave up on a previous condition for the ceasefire to be permanent and comprehensive, something that Netanyahu had systematically declined. However, it still insists that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza should be complete in order for the ceasefire to happen and for the remaining Israeli hostages that Hamas has held since 7 October to be handed over.
During the one-week truce in November, Hamas handed over elderly people and women that it had held hostage since its resistance operation launched on 7 October into southern Israel. A few other hostages have died in captivity, mostly due to Israeli air strikes. The families of the hostages have been carrying out repeated sit-ins to demand that Netanyahu move towards a ceasefire deal that can secure the release of hostages. Earlier this week, the families blocked an Israeli highway to demand a ceasefire deal.
Prior to Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, Doha is set to host a new round of proximity talks between Hamas and Israel over a possible deal. According to the Egyptian official who has been taking part in some of the ceasefire talks, “the trouble is that Israel usually sends a delegation with limited, if any, negotiation prerogatives. This means that nothing gets really concluded and the initial positive approval that the delegation gives does not always materialise into official approval when the delegation goes back to Israel.”
“This has been the case over and over again simply because Netanyahu does not want to end the war despite the growing tension with Hizbullah on the Israeli borders with Lebanon, despite the demonstrations of the families of the hostages, and despite the growing combat fatigue that has hit the Israeli army after close to a year of the war on Gaza,” the same Egyptian official said.
Today, the official added, Netanyahu has another reason not to want to end the war. “Netanyahu will not want to give Biden the ceasefire deal, not even if he gets the armaments he wants, which he will probably get, during his upcoming visit to Washington,” the official said. He added that for Netanyahu it makes a lot more sense to keep the war going “to further exhaust Hamas, to increase the damage and casualties in Gaza to make Hamas more unpopular, and to reach a deal when Trump gets into the White House” in November.
According to the same official, it looks like “time is running out for Biden to deliver his deal for a ceasefire in Gaza that will allow for the launch of a reconstruction process and security measures to be put in place in parallel with the expansion of the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia,” a reference to the normalisation deals that Israel had earlier been signing with some Arab states.
In his first statement since it was announced that he would be Trump’s running mate in the November elections, Senator J.D. Vance said that Israel should finish the war on Gaza quickly. He indicated that Trump would be able to help Israel find a rewarding end to the war and blamed Biden for having made it harder for Israel to win and end the war. He also vowed that Trump would be able to reinvigorate the peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Cairo-based foreign diplomatic sources generally agree. They argue that it is not just Netanyahu who is waiting for Trump to be re-elected. All regional capitals seem to be of the same opinion, they added.
However, the Egyptian official said that this would mean that the war will continue for over a year until the inauguration of the next US president in January, irrespective of who is actually going to win.
“For the Palestinians, this is an unending nightmare because Gaza is suffering from a severe lack of food, drinking water, medicines, medical services, ambulances and just about everything,” he said, adding that nobody can really predict what could come out of this situation if it continues, especially if Israel continues its aggressive war.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 18 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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