Excerpts from an Atlantic article. Read entirely here
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 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 Iran
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.
2 replies on “The United States and Israel Are Coming Apart ?”
Hi Penny,
I’m thinking it’s come to a point where it is not so much about the bluster in what Israeli leaders say, or about the country’s long standing policy of conquest, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, it’s what the Israelis will be forced to accept. While the Israeli politicians might be psychopathic enough to try and give the orders to invade Lebanon the conscript IDF ground forces will not co-operate and would recoil at the first sign of inevitable serious losses. The air force would strike but the retaliation would be brutal, and Israel cannot sustain guided missile strikes on it’s territory. Faced with real military opposition the settlers would retreat and revise their biblical dreams of God granted territories.
The US, amidst a desperate election year, might be forced to bomb Beirut, create carnage and kill civilians, but Hezbollah would survive. A quick cease fire would ensue. The Americans would not commit ground troops until after the explosions subsided and then only to facilitate the evacuation of dual US/Israeli
citizens.
I suppose Israel would still have it’s “Samson” nuclear option but I can’t bear to speculate about such an outcome.
On your first paragraph, hope your correct that the Israeli’s will be forced to accept concessions, Ukraine should ready itself for concessions as well, because both countries are waging chosen warfare over necessary warfare, IMO. Israel had options to get the hostages, but, that was not the goal, not really.
Ukraine should have just stopped killing the residents in the east and stuck to their earlier agreements- but, nope.
I see Ukraine as being more used by western powers than Israel, though. The attack on Gaza,though the US is mostly silent, was Israel’s choice.
As for Lebanon? Neither the US or Israel should be bombing that nation or Syria- It’s time for the US to leave Syria, and take their PKK proxies with them- Or back to the EU.
I’m not going to think about the Samson option either-