Geopolitics Review – 1st July 2024

Israel Updates – Part 2

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Tension With Biden and Netanyahu

3. War Cabinet Dissolved. What Next?

4. The Biden Peace Plan

5. Concluding Remarks

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Bitesize Edition

• Last week, I discussed the Rafah offensive and tensions between Israel and seemingly everybody else. I’d recommend checking at piece out first. Now we can start to look ahead to the future.

• We’ve seen the dissolution of the war cabinet in Israel due to a lack of strategy proposed for Gaza once the conflict is over. Is this because Netanyahu doesn’t want the conflict to end for his own career?

• Regardless, it puts the United States in a difficult position. They don’t want to appear too unsupportive of Israel, otherwise, Iran stirs to the East. This is making the US strategy towards the conflict seem erratic, often represented by rising tensions between Biden and Netanyahu. As more news of atrocities emerge from Israel’s operation in Gaza, the United States has to pull back support at some point, while at the same time sending $26B in aid and 25 F-35s.

• Biden wants a ceasefire so he can get an Israel-Saudi normalization deal over the line, likely to boost his election campaign in November. However, Netanyahu likely doesn’t care for Biden’s election campaign, and he got much more out of the previous Trump administration than Biden’s. Trump got the Abraham Accords over the line and in his peace proposal stated Jerusalem as the united capital of Israel. The question that emerges is what happens in November, and is Netanyahu still in the picture then? Let’s dive into more details below.

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Introduction

I’m on holiday this week, so there will be no Other News segment this week. There is still the second part of my Israel Updates piece to cover, so let’s dive into it below.

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Tensions With Biden & Netanyahu

Tensions do seem to be rising between Biden and Netanyahu with Israel and the U.S. making digs against the other.

Netanyahu has stopped Israeli intelligence officials and security chiefs from meeting with US officials on different occasions, and even with US condemnation, has allowed Israelis to return to three West Bank settlements that they had been banned from entering in 2005. This is one issue the United States has been against regarding Israel’s policy for quite some time.

Netanyahu also stated US arms supplies have been dropping for the last 4 months. It’s this that led to a response.

In said response, a White House Official stated: “We aren’t going to keep responding to the Prime Minister’s (Netanyahu) political statements. We look forward to constructive consultations with Defence Minister Gallant in Washington this week.” This is referring to this week, with these comments and the US rebuttal made on the last day.

Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash

Back in March, The United States seemingly felt bad for supporting what was becoming an even more destructive operation targeting the basic necessities of Palestinian civilians, and so started airdropping aid into Gaza. It was reported that one of these airdrops killed 18 people as a botched aid package landed in the sea, with 12 drownings and 6 killed in a stampede.

A month later, US Congress approved $26B in aid for Israel while also more recently signing a $3B deal for 25 F-35 jets to be sent to Israel.

They also completed the construction of the Gaza floating pier, aiming to get aid into Gaza. It broke apart a week after the operation began due to bad weather and choppy oceans. Earlier this month, (June 7^th) it was reported that the pier was rebuilt, but it will cease operations in July.

The United States is seemingly stuck between overcommitting to support Israel or denouncing support through different methods. I believe this is because they can’t appear not to support Israel or Iran would smell weakness. However, they can’t support a state in its strategies to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

If the United States remains on the fence, Netanyahu will continue to push for his goals of removing Hamas and ensuring Israel’s security from any potential future attack. The conflict won’t stop until Hamas is eliminated from power. The question is, is this even possible? Of course, the Hamas leadership can be taken out, but what of the tensions between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs which has existed for over a century now?