The Biden administration’s continued failure to secure a full and lasting ceasefire in Gaza may be considered the most terrible and deadly diplomatic catastrophe of our time. The principles have been in place for weeks; Hamas agreed to the general terms and approved the June 10 UN Security Council ceasefire resolution. However, US deference to Israeli intransigence – no matter that stubbornly blames Hamas – is costing thousands of Palestinian lives.
Any close follower of US-Israel relations could have predicted this. US acquiescence to Israel’s unprecedented assault on Gaza has powerful roots in the last 30 years – ironically, since the start of the Oslo “peace process” in 1993. US reluctance to confront its ally, save it from itself and insisting on a visionary path of reconciliation, has led us to this final precipice.
Let’s travel, for example, to June 2006, when an American citizen named Jerome Segal left the Gaza Strip carrying a letter to Washington. The letter was from Ismail Haniyeh, then and now leader of Hamas. Segal, founder of the Jewish Peace Lobby at the University of Maryland, was on his way to the State Department, where he would make a surprising offer.
Hamas had just been elected by the Palestinian people, who were exhausted and angered by the corruption of the government, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, and voted in favor of change. Haniyeh, long-time leader of the Islamic opposition in Palestine, was suddenly faced with the very real prospect of navigating through humanitarian and economic crises, not to mention continued military pressure from Israel and an imminent economic siege on Gaza. In the secret letter, Haniyeh sought a compromise.
Although Hamas’ letter called for the elimination of Israel, Haniyeh’s note to President George W. Bush was conciliatory. “We are so concerned about stability and security in the region,” Haniyeh wrote, “that we do not mind having a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and offering a truce for many years.” This was essentially a de facto recognition of Israel, with the cessation of hostilities – two of the main US and Israeli demands of Hamas. “The continuation of this situation,” Haniyeh prophetically added, “will encourage violence and chaos throughout the region.”
Was Hamas serious? At the time, it was in negotiations with the AP to form a unity government – suggesting that the letter was not just a ploy. Haniyeh now appeared to accept the concept of a two-state solution. If true, it was a stunning concession.
It would not be unprecedented for a revolutionary militant group, considered terrorists by the US, to come to the negotiating table. After all, the AP’s predecessor, the PLO, for a long time carried the terrorist label, as did Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. In fact, the Jewish militias that fought for Israel’s independence before 1948 were also labeled terrorists by British authorities – two of them, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, became prime ministers of Israel. Yet they all navigated the path of reconciliation, albeit with sharply divergent goals and degrees of success.
Some voices in Israel’s security establishment supported involvement with Hamas. Shmuel Zakai, former brigadier general and commander of the Israeli military division in Gaza, pressed Israel “to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than sharply worsen, the economic situation of Palestinians in [Gaza] Take away… You cannot simply launch blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic crisis they find themselves in and expect Hamas to sit back and do nothing.”
Another supporter of dialogue was a former Mossad director. “I believe there is a chance that Hamas, the devils of yesterday, could be reasonable people today,” said Efraim Halevy. “Instead of them being a problem, we should strive to make them part of the solution.”
But we will never know if Hamas really wanted to help find a solution. The US did not respond to Haniyeh’s letter. Instead, in 2007, he launched a covert effort to foment a Palestinian civil war, trying unsuccessfully to oust Hamas. In hand-to-hand combat on the streets, Hamas fought US-backed PA fighters. Hamas prevailed in the Battle of Gaza and has ruled ever since. True to Haniyeh’s prediction, violence and chaos followed, almost without pause. In war after war, Israel promised to destroy Hamas and failed.
In 2014, the Obama administration would follow the same path as Bush’s when it rejected another deal with Hamas, which was in new unity talks with the PA, and agreed again to a deal with Israel and the West – this one even more flexible than than Haniyeh’s Appeal eight years earlier. The new reconciliation effort “could have served Israel’s interests,” wrote Jerusalem-based author and analyst Nathan Thrall:
“It offered Hamas’s political adversaries a foothold in Gaza; it was formed without a single Hamas member; kept the same prime minister, deputy prime ministers, finance minister and foreign minister based in Ramallah; and, most importantly, he committed to fulfilling the three conditions for Western aid long demanded by America and its European allies: nonviolence, adherence to previous agreements, and recognition of Israel.”
Instead, the US tacitly supported Israel’s “fragmentation strategy” to divide Palestinian factions and, with it, the land itself. In a State Department cable, published by WikiLeaks, the director of Israel’s military intelligence told the American ambassador in Tel Aviv that a Hamas victory would allow Israel to “treat Gaza” as a separate “hostile country,” and that he would be “pleased” if the PA leader , Mahmoud Abbas “established a separate regime in the West Bank.” Thus, the West Bank was essentially isolated from Gaza, and the dream of a corridor between the two territories in a sovereign Palestine effectively died.
The US has also encouraged Israel’s policy of separating Palestine from itself, weakening the dream of self-determination and making a two-state solution virtually impossible. In the last 30 years, since the Oslo agreement was signed, the settler population in the West Bank has quadrupled, hundreds of military checkpoints remain in operation, and more than a dozen Jewish settlements now surround East Jerusalem, which Palestinians still consider the your capital. Yet in these three decades, no U.S. president has been willing to hold Israel accountable by linking U.S. military aid to the end of the ongoing colonization of the West Bank. The last US official to do this was Secretary of State James Baker, in the first Bush administration, in 1992. US inaction consequently allowed the expansion of Israeli settlements and the indiscriminate murder of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza .
Now, with Gaza in ruins, Hamas agreed in principle to a ceasefire, both on May 6 and again following the June 10 UN Security Council Resolution. Reports suggest that Hamas wants to secure guarantees of an Israeli withdrawal and lifting of the siege on Gaza. A senior Hamas official told Reuters that any requested changes were “not significant,” and Haniyeh said Hamas’ position was “consistent” with the principles of the agreement. Meanwhile, Israel is hesitant, saying, once again, that it will not rest until Hamas is no more. However, none of Israel’s previous promises to destroy Hamas have come true. With the group’s popularity rising among Palestinians, Israel’s continued insistence on eliminating Hamas amounts to a fantasy to justify the ongoing massacre. US Secretary of State Blinken, on his recent trip to the region, did not exactly inspire confidence. In his June 10 remarks in Cairo, he placed all the blame on Hamas, without once mentioning the murder of 274 Palestinians in the Israeli military operation to extract four hostages in Nuseirat.
If the Biden administration had an ounce of political vision, not to mention humanity, the US would end its sharp deference to Israel, flex its muscles and use the influence it somehow refuses to wield. Whatever little credibility the US maintains internationally is at stake. Far more importantly, the lives of more than two million Palestinians in Gaza depend on it.
But with Biden’s own party inviting Netanyahu to speak to the US Congress about “the Israeli government’s vision for defending democracy”; with the so-called leader of the free world acting as a punching bag for the Prime Minister of Israel; with all the moral clarity and political logic abandoned by a Washington intelligentsia held captive by pro-Israel interests: it may be too much to expect a change in behavior soon.
Still, it must be said. It is time for the US to stop accommodating Israel’s dishonest and ruinous behavior and insist on an immediate, complete and lasting ceasefire.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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