---
title: "The United States and Israel Are Coming Apart ?"
type: "post"
post_id: "5964"
slug: "the-united-states-and-israel-are-coming-apart"
canonical: "https://pennyforyourthoughts2.ca/2024/04/06/the-united-states-and-israel-are-coming-apart/"
markdown_url: "https://pennyforyourthoughts2.ca/2024/04/06/the-united-states-and-israel-are-coming-apart.md"
json_url: "https://pennyforyourthoughts2.ca/2024/04/06/the-united-states-and-israel-are-coming-apart.json"
txt_url: "https://pennyforyourthoughts2.ca/2024/04/06/the-united-states-and-israel-are-coming-apart.txt"
published: "2024-04-06T13:42:23+00:00"
modified: "2024-04-06T13:42:23+00:00"
author: "penny2"
categories:
  - "Uncategorized"
tags:
  - "Israel"
  - "Palestine"
  - "US"
site_name: "PFYT2"
publisher: ""
language: "en-US"
generator: "easyPress Markdown"
generator_version: "1.0.6"
---
**Excerpts from an [Atlantic article](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/04/us-israel-rift-war-palestine/677972/). Read entirely [here](https://archive.ph/c63Jj)**

How and when Israel proceeds into Rafah is a short-term, tactical dispute. In the medium term, **Israel and the Biden administration have a strategic difference over the prospect of an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.**

Hezbollah is probably one of the most potent nonstate fighting forces in human history and the most serious immediate military threat to Israel. Its estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles, many with precision guidance, are capable of striking any target in Israel and could probably overwhelm the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

**Hawkish members of the Israeli war cabinet, most notably Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have been pressing for a preemptive strike against Hezbollah** since the first days after the October 7 Hamas-led attack. Daily skirmishes have caused fatalities on both sides, particularly among the Lebanese, but **Hezbollah has made clear in word and deed that it does not want a broader war with Israel at the moment. Nonetheless, Israel [appears](https://archive.ph/o/c63Jj/https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/29/politics/concern-rising-biden-officials-israel-lebanon-incursion/index.html) to be preparing for a major ground offensive into Lebanon in the spring or early summer (at least, it is trying to convey that impression).**

Recapping:

- Israel is looking to expand it’s war making
- Hezbollah has made clear in word and deed it does not want a broader war with Israel.
- Still Israel provokes and prepares for wider war. Including the attack on the Iranian Consulate in Syria

**Such an invasion could be the prelude to precisely what the Biden administration has been striving to avoid since October 7: a regional conflagration that could draw in the United States and Ir**an

**An expanded war would certainly be bad for the United States, Hezbollah, and Iran, but it might be good for Israel, the country’s hawks surmise**. By their logic, **if a decisive victory is not achievable in Gaza, a war in Lebanon could yet restore Israeli deterrence, damage Iran’s deeper strategic interests, and possibly initiate a spiraling conflict that could lead the U.S. to strike Iran and its nuclear facilities.** The Biden administration thus faces the vexing problem of having its most important policy goal regarding the Gaza crisis challenged and perhaps derailed by its primary regional partner.

**Virtually every major U.S. goal in the Middle East requires a strong, integrated, U.S.-led alliance that combines Israeli military capability with Saudi financial, cultural, and religious authority.** Such was the thinking behind the Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement that was on the cusp of success just before October 7. The war in Gaza prompted Saudi Arabia to freeze those negotiations. But by early January, senior Saudi officials signaled interest in reviving the deal, provided that Israel accept the Palestinian right to a state and help create the framework for establishing one.

**The United States, and really the entire international community, has also concluded that any resolution to this nearly 100-year-old conflict must involve a Palestinian state alongside Israel.** But Israel is charging headlong the other way. Not only Netanyahu but his whole cabinet, and a large Knesset majority, reject the idea of a two-state solution.

**Israel has never formally recognized the Palestinian right to a state or entered into any process that defined the establishment of one as its end goal**. **Rather, since the mid-1990s, Israel first slowly and then rapidly moved in the opposite direction—toward annexing large parts of the occupied West Bank, which would render Palestinian statehood practically unattainable. This anti-peace agenda is now the official position of the Israeli government, not just Likud and other right-wing parties**. The Trump administration endorsed it in 2020 with the “Peace to Prosperity” proposal, which envisaged Israel annexing 30 percent more of the West Bank, including all of the Jordan Valley, such that any potential Palestinian entity would be entirely surrounded by a greater Israel. **Senior ministers in the current Israeli cabinet have gone so far as to speak not only of annexing Gaza but of removing Palestinians from the territory.**

> **Recapping**:
> 
> Israel has never formally recognized the Palestinian right to a state.

> Israel has never entered into any process that had as it’s end goal the establishment of just such a state.

> Israel has been annexing vast swathes of territory intended to render the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.

> Senior ministers in Israel’s government have spoken aloud the goal of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from their land.

**Read the rest at the link provided.**