The latest peace plan for Gaza was given a launch worthy of a historic turning point, with the US president delivering remarks directly to camera from the White House state dining room, declaring it finally “time for this war to end”.
Yet even as Joe Biden spelled out the proposal – leading in theory to a permanent end to hostilities, large-scale food deliveries and the start of reconstruction, there was clearly something awry.
If this plan was an Israeli proposal as Biden claimed, why was it being launched by Biden in Washington? There had been no word from Israel. By the time Biden began his remarks, it was already Friday night in the Middle East, the sabbath was under way and government offices closed.
When the prime minister’s office did produce a statement in response, it exuded all the reluctance and irritation of a politician roused from sleep. Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu had “authorised the negotiating team to present a proposal” but it was one that would “enable Israel to continue the war until all its objectives are achieved”.
A second statement issued after daybreak was even blunter. Any plan that did not achieve Israel’s war aims, including the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capacity, was a “non-starter”.
US officials argued the deal would fulfil Israel’s essential security requirements so there was ultimately no conflict, but there was no getting around Netanyahu’s choice of language, which made it clear he was not the author of the new plan, but a grudging participant. It also appeared designed to humiliate Biden. An experienced communicator like Netanyahu would know that the phrase “non-starter” would appear in the morning’s headlines alongside pictures of the president making his bid for peace.
By now, Biden is used to humiliation at Netanyahu’s hands. In early May, he warned that if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went into Rafah: “I’m not supplying the weapons”. Three weeks on, Israeli tanks have rolled into central and western Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which has been a refuge for more than 1 million displaced Palestinians. Nearly a million have had to flee for their lives once more.
Biden has not delivered on his threat to curb arms deliveries, which would have triggered outrage from not just Republicans but pro-Israel Democrats. Administration officials have instead sought to parse what “going into Rafah” means. When he issued his ultimatum a month ago, Biden had suggested it meant the IDF advancing to the city’s “population centres”. That has clearly already happened, but US officials are now arguing the forays so far have not been “major operations”.
It was left to the administration’s head of international aid, Samantha Power, to point out that even with supposedly limited operations, the humanitarian impact was just as bad and that “the catastrophic consequences that we have long warned about are becoming a reality”.
As for the proposal itself, there is a lot of old wine in the new bottle. Phase one involves an exchange of wounded, elderly and female hostages for Palestinian detainees during a six-week ceasefire, the same basic plan that collapsed at talks in Cairo just under a month ago after months of haggling.
Getting to phase two in the new plan involves the same sort of wishful thinking as the old plan – that carefully chosen words could bridge the divide between Hamas’s demand that the cessation of hostilities be permanent, and Israel’s insistence that the war must continue up to Hamas’s destruction.
Biden’s claim to be presenting a new plan did have some substance. A week ago in Paris, the CIA and Mossad chiefs, William Burns and David Barnea, met the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, and made progress on a revised framework.
Barnea offered some Israeli concessions. They would accept fewer hostages, there would be an agreed target for the level of humanitarian assistance (600 trucks a day), and the right of displaced Gazans to return to their homes right across the coastal strip was underlined. Just as importantly, Israeli negotiators accepted that even if the parties had not reached agreement on the conditions for phase two to begin after the six weeks of phase one, the ceasefire would be extended as long as talks continued, so an impasse would not trigger renewed bombing.
According to news website Axios, Netanyahu initially rejected the new proposal, but relented under pressure from the military and intelligence chiefs and the other members of the war cabinet. That would explain why he left it to Biden to unveil the plan, and his less than half-hearted response.
That response was a reminder to the US president of the limitations on his influence in the region. Netanyahu, who on Saturday accepted an invitation to address a joint session of Congress in coming months, has the power to do further damage to Biden’s frail election campaign.
Biden cannot do the same to Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister’s political career rests instead in the hands of far-right members of the coalition, who say they will walk out if he agrees a ceasefire deal.
For its part, Hamas responded to Biden’s announcement by saying it was ready to respond to the proposal “positively and constructively”. But it has a record of changing its position radically in the course of negotiations, and for failing to come up with basic requirements for a deal, like the list of Israeli hostages it would exchange.
The new peace plan faces the same fundamental problem as its predecessors. On Friday Biden talked about the thousands of lives lost on both sides, but those lives are not a priority for either side.
The Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was ready to see it burn in the hope that it would bring the region down in flames and leave Israel in ashes. For Netanyahu, political survival and insulation from looming corruption charges depend on the war continuing.
At least the ceasefire talks will start again, bringing a small measure of renewed hope, but if they are to succeed, it will have to be in spite of the leadership on both sides.
