The applause was loudest at the beginning, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared to a joint meeting of Congress that Israel \u201cwill win\u201d in its fight against Hamas. They applauded, too, when he spotlighted the resilience of those who remain hostages in Gaza and lauded the bravery of the Jewish state\u2019s front-line soldiers.<\/p>\n
Far fewer stood and cheered when he spoke of his \u201cvision\u201d for the Palestinian territory\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
To many Democrats who\u2019ve been critical of Netanyahu, the Israeli leader merely confirmed what they already knew.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, [he] doubled down,\u201d said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), who watched Wednesday\u2019s address from the back of the House chamber. It\u2019s \u201cabsurd \u2026 to think that doing more of the same is going to deliver a different result,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nearly 10 months into Israel\u2019s Gaza offensive, amid deepening frustration from the Biden administration and isolation on the world stage, Netanyahu made no gestures toward compromise. There was no talk of Palestinian autonomy. No discussion of Palestinian rights to life and freedom. No attempt to address the grievances that have fueled Palestinians\u2019 decades-old anger toward Israel.<\/p>\n
Instead, he spoke of a \u201cdemilitarized and deradicalized\u201d Gaza; a Gaza under Israeli control \u201cfor the foreseeable future.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the moment for the leader of Israel to lay out a vision for the future,\u201d Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) recalled thinking as he watched the speech on a TV in his office, one of more than 50 Democratic lawmakers who boycotted the address. But \u201che didn\u2019t. He offered no road map.\u201d He hadn\u2019t changed a bit, Welch said.<\/p>\n
The Biden administration has for months sought to negotiate an ambitious, three-phase peace agreement to end Israel\u2019s war in Gaza, with the White House asserting amid Netanyahu\u2019s Washington visit that the negotiating parties were closer \u201cthan we\u2019ve ever been before\u201d to agreeing on a short-term cease-fire and initial hostage release. The next step, according to Biden, would involve negotiations over a permanent end to the fighting and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, along with the release of all remaining hostages.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s phase three of the plan, which would culminate in new Palestinian governance, security, rebuilding and a path to statehood, that is the most essential ingredient to the success of any long-term peace, experts say.<\/p>\n
But if the concept of a viable Palestinian future wasn\u2019t one of Netanyahu\u2019s considerations before the war, which began with October\u2019s deadly Hamas attack into Israel, his remarks in recent days left little reason to believe that anything in his thinking has changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously he didn\u2019t talk at all about a long-term plan for the Palestinians because Netanyahu has effectively renounced a Palestinian state,\u201d said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who chairs a Senate subcommittee focused on the Middle East. \u201cI think his plan for a while has been to have no workable plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill who have grown more frustrated with Israel\u2019s conduct over the course of the war have begun to acknowledge that the Israeli government has largely foreclosed on phase two of the peace plan as well.<\/p>\n
Satellite imagery, witness testimony and the comments of military commanders have shown for months that preparations are underway for a long-term Israeli presence in Gaza. In recent months, Israel fortified a strategic route, known as the Netzarim Corridor, that carves Gaza into two and allows for the quick deployment of Israeli troops throughout the territory.<\/p>\n
Israeli forces have razed homes and bulldozed acres of farmland to create and expand buffer zones along their strategic corridor, and along Gaza\u2019s borders with Israel and Egypt. Israeli commanders have talked about a plan for \u201cfull freedom of operation\u201d for their forces. They have churned earth and rubble into defensive berms. And they have begun building military bases and transforming seized buildings for other military purposes.<\/p>\n
Even as Biden administration officials insisted this week that they are close to securing a deal between Israel and Hamas, officials also quietly acknowledged that Netanyahu has continued to put demands on the table.<\/p>\n
After meeting with the prime minister Thursday, Vice President Harris, who is set to replace President Biden atop the Democratic presidential ticket, urged the warring parties to \u201cget the deal done\u201d so that negotiators can move on to subsequent parts of the peace plan and \u201cwe can get a cease-fire to end the war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who along with Israel\u2019s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, opposes a cease-fire deal and has called for building Jewish settlements in Gaza, responded to Harris on social media. \u201cThere will be no truce,\u201d he proclaimed.<\/p>\n
Observers say Netanyahu\u2019s political survival depends on both men.<\/p>\n
The split screen between the administration\u2019s projected optimism about an agreement and the reality in Gaza has both frustrated and baffled some Washington analysts.<\/p>\n
In recent months, as the Israeli government has defied Biden in Gaza, and as Smotrich and far-right allies have accelerated Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, administration officials have alluded to a willingness by Israel\u2019s Arab neighbors to play a role in Gaza\u2019s future governance and security. Some have suggested that a revitalized Palestinian Authority \u2014 the weak, corrupt and deeply unpopular governing apparatus in the West Bank \u2014 might even run Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith a deal, a rebuilding of Gaza will begin [with] Arab nations and the international community, along with Palestinian and Israeli leaders, to get it done in a manner that does not allow Hamas to rearm,\u201d Biden said in the May address, when he laid out his three-phase peace plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis question of what comes next, what comes after this conflict, is one that we have discussed extensively with our Arab partners, with the Palestinians, with the Israeli government over the course of the last four or five months,\u201d Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs told lawmakers in June. Leaf acknowledged that the Palestinian Authority was facing a \u201csevere financial crisis\u201d because Israel controls its revenue flow and had largely restricted it since Oct. 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Arab world is horrified by what\u2019s going on,\u201d Yousef Munayyer, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Arab Center Washington DC, a think tank, said in a recent interview casting doubt on the path advocated by the president. \u201cThe idea that they\u2019re going to somehow flip a switch and think that there\u2019s going to be some sort of transformational deal \u2014 I don\u2019t know what planet you\u2019re looking at this from.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loveluck reported from Jerusalem.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The applause was loudest at the beginning, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared to a joint meeting of Congress that Israel \u201cwill win\u201d in its fight against Hamas. They applauded, too, when he spotlighted the resilience of those who remain hostages in Gaza and lauded the bravery of the Jewish state\u2019s front-line soldiers. Far fewer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}