Biden, Harris Push to End Gaza War
Is Sinwar's assassination an opening?
Axios (“Biden tells Netanyahu it’s time to end Gaza war after Sinwar’s elimination“):
President Biden said after his call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that it’s time to “move on” and end the war in Gaza after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Biden has been personally pushing for months for a hostage and ceasefire deal in Gaza, and he hopes to reach a breakthrough in the stalled negotiations before he leaves office on Jan. 20.
Israeli and U.S. officials say Sinwar’s death on Wednesday creates an opportunity to resume talks on a deal to release the 101 hostages still held by Hamas and establish a ceasefire in Gaza.
Biden called Netanyahu from Air Force One on his way to Germany and congratulated the prime minister on the elimination of Sinwar by Israeli soldiers operating in southern Gaza. “The leaders agreed that there is an opportunity now to push for the release of the hostages and stressed they will work together to that end,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said. The White House said Biden and Netanyahu discussed “how to use this moment to bring the hostages home and to bring the war to a close with Israel’s security assured and Hamas never again able to control Gaza.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli President Isaac Herzog that he’s planning to travel to the region in the coming days to discuss ways to push for a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, the Israeli president’s office said.
The Hill (“Harris: Israeli killing of Sinwar an opportunity to end war in Gaza“):
Vice President Harris on Thursday praised Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, calling for it to be an opportunity for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza to end after more than a year of fighting in the Middle East.
“Hamas is decimated and its leadership is eliminated,” Harris said during remarks from Wisconsin, where she was campaigning.
“This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza, and it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” she added. “It is time for the day after to begin, without Hamas in power.”
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed Thursday that it killed Sinwar during an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Despite both Harris and President Biden calling Sinwar’s killing an opportunity to end the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a message that while Sinwar’s killing is an important moment, the task to end Hamas is not yet complete, CNN reported.
On the surface, eliminating the architect of the October 7 massacre opens an avenue for negotiation. Certainly, Hamas has been more than decimated and the toll exacted on the people of Gaza has been horrific.
At the same time, Harris’s vision for a settlement demonstrates why it’s unlikely to happen:
- Israel is secure
- the hostages are released
- the suffering in Gaza ends
- the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination
- without Hamas in power
That’s a tall order!
The Netanyahu government clearly believes that Israel being secure is incompatible with Palestinian self-determination. And, given that Hamas is the chief representative of the Palestinians in Gaza, it’s highly unlikely that they’re going to agree to relinquish power. Both the Israeli government and Hamas seem to be willing to kill Palestinians indefinitely in service of their war aims.
An uprising of the people of Gaza against Hamas is the obvious way out. But that’s a massive collective action problem and thus highly unlikely to materialize.
QFE
So that they can become an oppressed people inside of Greater Israel?
After all:
Equal rights in a multi-ethnic (i.e., non-Jewish) Israel aren”t on the table either. Just look at the West Bank.
Funny that the Gazans should somehow rise up at great personal risk for a shit future but Netanyahu can just go on with his clearly illegal settlement policies.
Maybe it’s helpful to see the Palestinians as actual people rather than those who should just solve Israel’s problems and STFU.
This caught my eye. What makes Hamas ‘representative?’
Does it not seem to anyone that Palestinian ‘friends’ in the West are like the ‘friend’ who keeps urging you to get up again in a bar fight you’re clearly losing, and are going to keep on losing? Come on, man you’ve only have a broken leg, a massive concussion and a missing eye, whaddyou a pussy?
Should Imperial Japan have kept fighting? Would people who cared about them urged them to? Should the South have kept up an endless war even after it was doomed? Would anyone who actually GAF about southerners told them to keep at it?
They’re down to a rubble field in Gaza and a rapidly-gentrifying suburb in the WB. Do the Palestinians have to be Carthage to satisfy the romantic notions of Westerners? Yep, they’re all dead, but hey, they had gumption. Now, rest in peace.
This is not a comic book movie, this is war, and all the Palestinians are ever going to do, is die. Yay?
@Michael Reynolds:
This isn’t about whether Japan should have kept fighting, but about whether Japan would have kept fighting if surrender meant either genocide or permanent apartheid status in their own country.
There’s got to be a carrot somewhere.
But rather than acknowledging how people actually behave, you came up with a silly straw man. Did Japan/Germany disappear after WW2?
@drj:
Parts of Germany did.
East Prussia, Silesia and the Sudetenland were effectively erased.
It was not uncommonly thought in Germany that “unconditional surrender” was code for the ending of Germany.
If the Morgenthau Plan had been implemented (partition and “pastoralization”) the consequences would have likely been mass famine.
Germany was rather fortunate that the US and USSR began falling out almost immediately.
@drj:
If the option for the people of Gaza in September 2023 was between life in a self-governing Gaza, or Gaza reduced to ruin and death subsequent to a rather pointless atrocity, the first choice might have seemed preferable to some, at least.
Just as it might be more sensible to try to work towards a route to the rebuilding of Gaza, and its return to self-government, rather than trying to carry on “resistance” in a rubble-heap.
@Michael Reynolds: That Netenyahu supported it to be a stalking horse enemy/pseudo government?
@drj:
As @JohnSF: points out, the Germans had every reason to suspect the Soviets would enslave them if not exterminate them.
1) For the tenth time, people intent on genocide do not pause the genocide to offer polio shots. 2% death rate after a year is not genocide, it’s war.
2) Permanent apartheid? Nothing is permanent. Live to fight another day, rather than dying today. Were the Japanese civilians on Okinawa smart to throw their babies off cliffs and blow themselves up with grenades? You know what the ones who surrendered are doing now? Bouncing their great, great grandchildren on their knees.
3) The carrot is they live, they love, they have kids, they work, they eat, and drink and laugh. Would you suggest the population of North Korea commit suicide rather than submit? That’s being rather free with other people’s lives, isn’t it? Has anyone asked the people of Gaza if they want to die?