Joe Biden stood in the White House Rose Garden last week to announce a ceasefire deal, but it wasn’t the one he has been desperate to secure for months. Biden confirmed that Israel and Hezbollah had accepted a US-brokered agreement to stop a war that has devastated large parts of Lebanon. But the deal does nothing to end Israel’s calamitous war on Gaza, where Biden and his administration had purportedly been pushing for a ceasefire – while enabling Israel with US weapons and political cover for 14 months.
Biden could have achieved a ceasefire in Gaza months ago if he had truly applied pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. On 26 November, Netanyahu made clear the importance of an uninterrupted flow of US weapons to Israel, saying the 60-day truce with Hezbollah would give Israeli troops “a breather” and provide time to replenish arms supplies from Washington.
