Israel charges ahead unstopped as US warnings go unheeded

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said in Beirut last week that the French- U.S. proposal for a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite militia party Hezbollah was still “on the table.” It was September 26, the day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defiantly took to the stage at the U.N. General Assembly in New York and rejected the U.S.-sponsored plan.

As dozens of diplomats left the room, Netanyahu then lashed out at the U.N. and the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor has requested an arrest warrant for him for crimes against humanity. On that same day, September 27, an Israeli plane assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Three days later, the ground invasion of Lebanon began.

U.S. President Joe Biden said the White House was giving Israel recommendations, but this council has fallen on deaf ears. A year after the October 7 attack by the Palestinian militia Hamas, which left around 1,200 Israelis dead, Israeli bombings have caused more than 41,000 deaths in Gaza. Despite repeated warnings from Washington, the Netanyahu government has continued to disregard them. Israel now believes it has sufficiently weakened Hamas and has shifted its focus to Hezbollah and Iran, which launched about 180 missiles at Israeli territory last Tuesday.

Neither Washington’s fear of being drawn into a wider Middle Eastern conflict nor its declining global image is restraining Israel. “As he declared at the start of the war, [Netanyahu] is determined to change the rules of the game and not return to living under the constant threat of Hamas and Hezbollah,” says Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Israel is stopping at nothing to achieve what its ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, described as a “new design” for the Middle East — an Israeli peace without Hamas, Hezbollah, and, above all, without a viable Palestinian state or a just resolution for the Palestinian people. This goal, however, seems more unattainable than ever, given the inevitable legacy of pain and hatred that will be left by the destruction of Gaza, the extraordinarily high death toll in the Gaza Strip, and the growing casualties in Lebanon.

“Nothing can persuade its Arab neighbors that Israel cannot live with them in peace more than the course on which Israel is currently set,” wrote David Hearst, editor of the Middle East Eye, last week. Even Saudi Arabia, which was on the verge of sidelining the Palestinian issue to normalize relations with Israel before the war, has been forced to reconsider. Riyadh is keenly aware that, like in other Arab nations, its population deeply identifies with the Palestinian cause.

Israel rapidly squandered the initial wave of solidarity following the October 7 attacks. The horrific violence of its response, manifested in the war in Gaza, transformed its image from victim to executioner in the eyes of many. Of the 41,000 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip, nearly half were children, women, and the elderly. Amid the looming specter of potential war crimes, Israel has faced an increase in disputes this year.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has requested an arrest warrant against Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, — as well as against the Hamas leadership — for crimes against humanity. The genocide case in Gaza initiated by South Africa at the International Court of Justice is still active and several countries have joined it, including Spain, which recognized the Palestinian State in May, along with Ireland and Norway.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s government launched a new diplomatic front by declaring U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres a persona non grata, citing his failure to “categorically” condemn the Iranian attack. Mitchell Barak, a former adviser to several Israeli politicians, exemplified the prevailing sentiment among certain segments of Israeli society when he stated earlier last week that the country would “punish and kill” anyone who attempted to “harm” them.

CNN analyst Nick Paton Walsh remarked last week that the Israeli government has embarked on an “unclear” path, a headlong course with unpredictable consequences. Critics argue that Israel is caught in a warlike drift, even attacking those who merely advocate for peace, as U.N. Secretary-General Guterres did. A statement from the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign encapsulated this sentiment by referencing the concept of “mad dog diplomacy,” a strategy attributed to Israeli General Moshe Dayan, which suggests that “Israel must be a mad dog; too dangerous to bother.”

A “new Middle East”

Since the beginning of the war, Biden has declared his unwavering support for Israel — he has gone so far as to define himself as a “Zionist” — and has tried to reconcile U.S. military aid to Israel with his administration’s calls to avoid escalating a conflict that could drag the U.S. into war. Washington has not forgotten the disastrous invasion of Iraq, which led the U.S. to pledge against deploying more troops in the Middle East — a sentiment further reinforced by the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden administration.

In this challenging landscape, a key point was securing a temporary ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, a necessity for Washington in an election year, where Republican and Democratic candidates are neck-and-neck n the polls. However, Biden’s reluctance over the past 12 months to pressure Israel by reducing military aid — highlighted by the announcement of a new $8 billion package on September 26 — combined with Hamas’s lack of clarity and Netanyahu’s minimal interest in any agreement that doesn’t guarantee his terms, has meant that no ceasefire deal has been reached, aside from the temporary truce in November.

It is no coincidence that the new invasion of Lebanon has occurred less than a month before the U.S. elections. Eliot Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations noted in a teleconference with journalists last week: “We are in an interregnum,” referring to the period that began when Biden announced he would not be standing for re-election. “The Israelis, dealing with a lame duck president, are a little bit less likely to take his advice.”

Steven Cook, another expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, remarked: “I don’t think that there’s a tremendous amount of effort being put into necessarily restrain the Israelis from responding” to Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday.

Randa Slim, director of Conflict Resolution at the Middle East Institute in Washington, point out that the White House has made comments regarding “the opportunity to reshape the Middle East” which echo those made by Israeli officials, who suggest that Israel may ultimately have to engage in war with Iran. According to Slim, Israel currently perceives “an opportunity to go to war, given the political moment in the U.S.” She added: “It’s as if we haven’t learned the lessons from that reckless experiment in Iraq in 2003: attempting to reshape the order in the Middle East.”

Rouzbeh Parsi, head of the Middle East and North Africa at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, agreed: “Israel has invaded Lebanon several times over the past 50 years without much success, and each time it has done so it has spawned a new form of resistance.” Parsi believes that if “Hezbollah [Iran’s ally] is significantly destroyed and the West supports Israel in its war, hardliners in Iran will have good reason to claim that the only deterrent left to them is becoming a nuclear weapons state.” That is precisely the worst-case scenario for Israel, which sees Iran as a threat to its existence.

Parsi laments that this new Middle East — an Israeli peace without justice for the Palestinians — represents a “delusional fiction” that some Republicans and Democrats are “buying into.” According to him, Washington’s “reprimands” of Israel are merely “rhetorical,” as the U.S. does not utilize “any of the levers of power at its disposal.” He argues that this is either due to political unwillingness or tacit approval of much of Israel’s actions. On Friday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, called on the world’s Muslim countries to unite against their “common enemy”: Israel.

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