The US secretary of state has arrived in Israel for 11th-hour talks aimed at shoring up a deal for a lasting ceasefire in the war in Gaza, amid signals from Israeli and Hamas officials that a breakthrough may not be as close as international mediators had suggested.
Antony Blinken flew into Tel Aviv on Sunday as part of Washington’s renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire in the 10-month-old conflict, negotiations seen as even more urgentafter last month’s back-to-back assassinations of a top Hezbollah commander and the Hamas political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.
It is hoped a ceasefire would lower the temperature in the Middle East and dissuade Iran and Hezbollah from retaliatory action that could cause the war in Gaza to slide quickly into a region-wide conflict.
The whole thing feels farcical. How are we struggling to get negotiators to agree to a proposal they originally suggested while they are entirely reliant on us to do the thing that we’re asking them to stop doing?
I feel like one must have a humiliation kink to do Anthony Blinken’s job.
Because the point was to look like peace was coming not to actually get a ceasefire.
Or at the very least make it look like everyone but Israel was preventing it to happen
There’s a weird element to the war that I never really hear people examine:
Netanyahu want’s Trump to win, and has an enormous amount of power to humiliate and troll Harris and Biden. I really hope the Harris campaign – who seem to honestly be much smarter than most political campaigns in recent memory on either side – is preparing for contingencies like Netanyahu pulling out of the negotiation the day before Harris’ acceptance speech and doing something crazy like attributing Biden’s unconditional support for his decision not to concede.
Anytime Netanyahu wants, he can basically throw a grenade into the US election by thanking Biden and Harris.
I really hope they’re considering their options, because even divorced from basic morality, unconditional support for Israel clearly has major electoral liabilities.