As Donald Trump hops from one Gulf capital to another, signs some eye-catching deals, meets the new Syrian president and even supposedly makes progress on the Iran nuclear issue, it looks like the war in Gaza has been pushed on to the sidelines of US diplomacy. While there were negotiations involving the Americans this week in Qatar over the release of hostages, Israel also saw fit to conduct a devastating assassination attempt on Hamas’s leader, Mohammed Sinwar, followed by intensive airstrikes across the strip. While Sinwar’s fate has not yet been confirmed, it is telling that this all took place while the US president was in the region: it reveals how unserious the Israeli government is about ending the war.
The truth is that if the war is resumed in earnest, it will be unsurprising because, earlier this month, the Israeli security cabinet unanimously approved a plan to expand its military offensive in the Gaza Strip (with the caveat of waiting until the US president’s Middle East trip was over). The new Israeli military plan, agreed under immense pressure by the most extreme rightwing members of the coalition, goes beyond “defeating Hamas” and expresses little interest in the fate of the remaining hostages. Instead, it aims to indefinitely occupy the entire territory.
