If you think reports of Netanyahu rejecting an Israeli proposal are bizarre, think again. After all, this isn’t so much George Orwell’s 1984 but Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2024. The moment the Israeli leader stipulated that Israel would “reserve the right to return to war”, it was clear that the “Israeli proposal” presented by the US president, Joe Biden, last Friday, to end hostilities with a three-part hostage release and ceasefire deal, was dead in the water. Netanyahu wasn’t just placating his extreme rightwing coalition but reneging on an agreement that he had never wanted in the first place.
The proposal, which Biden said had emerged from negotiations with “leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries”, offered a “roadmap to an enduring ceasefire and the release of all hostages”. The plan included a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as part of its first phase and would also have seen the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, along with, in the latter stages, the brokering of a permanent ceasefire. That’s where Netanyahu’s stipulations, conditions and interpretation of the conflict makes any deal that obfuscates his goal to “destroy Hamas” unattainable, even if technically it is Hamas that seems to have rejected it.
For many years, Netanyahu had the reputation of being risk-averse. Apologists said that, notwithstanding the bluster, demagoguery and sanctimony he exuded, he was fundamentally cautious and balanced. His detractors, on the other hand, claimed that he was spurious by nature, that this was not circumspection or astuteness but rather cowardice, endemic vacillation and an inherent inability to make decisions.
Risk-averse or not, his only calculus, both sides agree, is political survival by any and all means. With his political life-expectancy threatened by an ongoing criminal trial, and the aftermath of the 7 October terror attack and ensuing war, whatever risk-aversion he may have exhibited in the past has been replaced by sheer recklessness and crude cynicism.
This attitude governs his refusal to take responsibility and be held accountable for his management of the conflict, his deliberate confrontations with the US and his seemingly indifferent, duplicitous approach to the hostage situation.
In the six days that have passed since Biden presented the “Israeli proposal”, neither Israel nor Hamas had responded conclusively until Thursday. Attention has shifted dramatically to the Israel-Lebanon border, where a major escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, and either directly or indirectly with Iran, is on the verge of erupting. This seems to have sidetracked a Gaza deal, but the two are in fact inextricably linked.
Since the outset of the war, Biden’s primary objective has been to prevent escalation. Despite the specific issue Israel and Lebanon have over the exact demarcation of the border, last delineated in an agreement in 2000 after Israel withdrew from a southern Lebanon “security zone” carved in 1985, the US sees a ceasefire in Gaza as the key to de-escalation in the north. The two issues are sort of geopolitical communicating vessels, each responding to the other.
Biden’s timing was not coincidental, and his motivation to present the proposal was as substantive as it was political. It came a day after Donald Trump, his rival and presumptive Republican candidate this November, was unanimously convicted of 34 felonies of falsifying financial records regarding a hush-money payment to a porn actor. Biden standing in the White House and talking about a possible ceasefire in the Middle East was as stark a contrast between the two as possible.
Substantively, Biden is convinced that the war should be terminated immediately, after eight months of unmitigated support for Israel. Politically, he simply outed Netanyahu. Suspecting that a mendacious and manipulative Netanyahu could at any moment deny or renege on Israel’s own proposal, Biden decided to call his bluff, although ostensibly he demanded that Hamas accept the plan, as if Israel’s consent was already a done deal. It wasn’t.
The US has two prime vested interests in pressing for a deal. First, a realisation that the war has exhausted itself and that no further tangible achievements can be made, let alone some kind of gamechanging action. When Biden spoke last Friday about a permanent ceasefire, it was the first time he has done so in a public, clear and unequivocal way. The diplomatic cost exacted on the US and the political cost to him have become too high to sustain. This was premised on a belated recognition that Netanyahu, who has launched a war with no coherent, defined and attainable political goals, has been prolonging it for political reasons.
The US administration finally reached the conclusion, after months of living in a convenient state of denial, that Netanyahu was deliberately defying it by refusing to entertain Washington’s ideas or present a postwar political framework or plan of his own. Furthermore, evidence was mounting that he was intentionally seeking a confrontation with Biden for political expediency. Biden said so himself, in an interview with Time magazine earlier in the week. Second, Biden needs to prevent the war in Gaza spreading to Lebanon, where the stakes are much higher, the devastation potentially bigger and the possibility of the US being dragged into it considerable.
In an attempt to articulate a policy that strived to both end the war and prevent escalation, Biden presented the plan. Even in Netanyahu’s smoke and mirrors world, he knew the time for prevarication was over. But his insistence that Hamas be eradicated has made any attempt by Biden to reach a peaceful settlement unviable. Hamas will now demand American assurances of a permanent ceasefire, but it is doubtful the US can deliver them - although the director of the CIA and Qatar are still trying hard to salvage a deal.
Whether Netanyahu’s response was meant to elicit a rejection from Hamas or to get Biden off his back isn’t important. Netanyahu’s predicament is obvious. He has reached an impasse. Procrastination, stalling and wasting time will no longer do. This is binary: deal or no deal. As far as he is concerned, no deal is a better option.
Alon Pinkas served as Israel’s consul general in New York from 2000 to 2004. He is now a columnist for Haaretz
