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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">Pure theater: The Biden–Netanyahu ’fallout’ over Rafah</h1><p class="gmail-">Despite
public disagreements between Washington and Tel Aviv over Gaza,
ongoing US–Israel weapon supplies suggest that the discord is more media
spectacle than policy shift.</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/authors/abdel-qader-osman" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">Abdel Qader Osman</a></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span>MAY 15, 2024 -<font size="1"> </font></span><font size="1"><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/pure-theater-the-biden-netanyahu-fallout-over-rafah">https://thecradle.co/articles/pure-theater-the-biden-netanyahu-fallout-over-rafah</a></font></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="http://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/c0a64f84-12ad-11ef-be27-00163e02c055.jpeg" alt="" width="438" height="207" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span>(Photo credit: The Cradle)</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span><p>With
Israel appearing determined to launch a large-scale military operation
in Rafah to reverse its current image of defeat in Gaza, another public
confrontation – between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – intensified last week. </p><p>Biden claims to have <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-delays-sending-precision-weapons-to-israel-253f12f0">halted the shipment</a> of
precision weapons to Israel to prevent a large operation in southern
Gaza, where around 1.3 million displaced Palestinian civilians have
sought shelter, while Netanyahu threatens to continue the war
without Washington’s help.</p><p>In a CNN interview last week, the US president <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/12/politics/biden-lawmakers-congress-israel-ultimatum-weapons-israel/index.html#:~:text=And%20last%20week%2C%20Biden%20told,that%20deal%20with%20that%20problem.%E2%80%9D">said</a>, “I’m
not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with
Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem.”</p><p>To which Netanyahu responded that same evening, in a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/dansenor/reel/C64KI4AroFf/">podcast discussion</a> with
American Jewish journalist Dan Senor, “If we have to stand alone, we
will do so, because I’m the prime minister of Israel, the one and
only Jewish state, and we will not go down.” </p><p>At first glance, the
growing tensions between the two allies playing out in the political
and media arenas seemed promising for those parties keen on ending the
Palestinian bloodshed seven months after Tel Aviv launched its brutal
assault on Gaza. </p><p>But the Israeli premier, who has often been
caught on camera boasting about Israel’s control over the US political
scene, may have won this round. Within just a few days, Biden’s warnings
and threats all but dissipated.</p><p>It began with a flurry of
American politicians hitting the TV circuit to lambast their sitting
president for veering from Israel’s war agenda, with some US media
outlets describing Biden’s decision as “encouraging antisemitism.”</p><p>US ambassador to Tel Aviv, Jack Lew, following the script of his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24861">confirmed</a> on
Sunday that “fundamentally, nothing has changed in the basic
relationship” – that only one batch of US munitions was frozen, but
everything else continues to flow “ordinarily.” </p><p>And Biden’s meek initiative ended decisively on Tuesday when his administration <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/us-readies-1bn-in-bombs-for-israel-days-after-pausing-arms-transfer">informed</a> Congress that it is planning a $1 billion weapons transfer to Israel. </p><p>Netanyahu certainly knew how to turn the screws. </p><p><strong>Confirmation of the status quo </strong></p><p>As
this was the first rhetorical confrontation between the US and Israel
since the Gaza war’s onset, many Arab and western media outlets
interpreted the intensity of the exchanges as a result of growing
divergence between a Biden administration concerned “for the lives of
civilians” and a Netanyahu government seeking to <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/677">restore the deterrent power</a> it lost on 7 October with Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and Iran’s 13 April <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/delivering-a-true-promise-an-insider-account-of-irans-strikes-on-israel">retaliatory strikes</a>. </p><p>Speaking to <i>The Cradle</i>, Australia-based political analyst Hussein al-Dirani says:</p><blockquote><p>The
American administration is primarily responsible for the war of
extermination practiced by the Zionist forces against the Palestinians
now, in the past, and in the future, and the entity is nothing but one
of the arms of American evil in the Arab and Islamic region. Biden can,
within one day or less, stop this massacre through an order to the
leaders of the aggression to the effect: ‘Stop the war now,’ and it
will stop immediately.</p></blockquote><p><strong>The west’s commitment to Zionism</strong></p><p>The
roots of today’s conflict remain an age-old one: the implantation of
the Israeli entity into West Asia, a project of global Zionism
originating from the “Herzl Conference” at the end of the 19th century. </p><p>For
decades, no American or European political leader has had the option of
ending support for Israel. The global Israel lobby, now deeply
entrenched in western political, academic, media, and finance
institutions, aims to protect the existence of Israel at all costs,
stabilize it in the region, and push Arab countries to normalize
relations with Tel Aviv, explains Yemeni political journalist
Osama Sari.</p><p>Sari, who is editor-in-chief of the <a href="https://en.ypagency.net/"><i>Yemeni Press Agency</i></a>, tells <i>The Cradle</i> that Biden
cannot abandon Israel at this stage, with the contentious US
presidential election looming in November and facing great domestic
pressure from anti-war US youths and key minority voters. </p><p>Some
observers believe that Biden’s threat to cut off offensive weapons to
Israel was a feint to score points with his restless, disenchanted
electorate and to prod Israel into re-opening negotiations for a Gaza
ceasefire, which Tel Aviv recently rejected.</p><p>Others, like analyst
Dirani, contend that Biden’s political ploys cannot effectively
influence the presidential contest because Biden and his chief
competition, former US President Donald Trump, are both known, longtime,
to-the-wall supporters of Israel. </p><p><strong>Theatrics of US-Israel’ tensions’</strong></p><p>Biden’s
short-lived media strategy intended to market the idea that Washington
is dissatisfied with Netanyahu’s intransigence and his insistence on
invading Rafah to commit even more massacres – turning global and US
public opinion further against Israel – despite Hamas agreeing to a
ceasefire under the Egyptian–Qatari proposal. </p><p>Rhetoric and
posturing aside, the US position toward Gaza does not fundamentally
differ from Israel’s and may even be more impulsive and irrational. Had
it not been for unprecedented amounts of US military support from day
one of this round of conflict, the Gaza war would have stalled a good
six months earlier. Israel would also not have been able to withstand
Iran’s retaliatory response in April without the US military leading all
defensive operations, nor even hope to thwart the combined military
operations of the region’s Axis of Resistance. </p><p>In the UN Security
Council, the US has a long history of using its veto power to shield
Israel. Out of the 262 vetoed resolutions since the UN’s inception in
1945, Washington has wielded its veto 116 times on issues related to
Palestine. </p><p>It used this power 80 times to prevent condemnation of
Israel and 36 times against laws supporting Palestinian rights, with
the latest veto coming down just a month ago. </p><p>The White House and
the State Department also consistently provide cover for Israel,
claiming absurdly that the occupation state is defending itself by
international law and that the US has not observed any violations in
Gaza despite the Palestinian death toll exceeding 35,000 and the number
of wounded surpassing 78,000.</p><p><strong>Whose red lines? </strong></p><p>This unquestioning support of Israel, despite mumblings in some Beltway corridors that Tel Aviv is <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-war-on-gaza-is-destroying-imecs-viability">becoming</a> a “<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/22/israel-gaza-biden-netanyahu-security-united-states/">US liability</a>,”
begs the question of whether there is any US red line for malign
Israeli behaviors. Yemeni editor Sari doesn’t see the Americans drawing
any lines for Israel, no matter the crime: </p><blockquote><p>Until now,
no international party has been able to classify Biden’s red lines. His
attempt to suggest that it was an invasion of Rafah is not
convincing at all. The entity has not left any red lines since the
beginning of its aggression against Gaza, and its crimes affected
hundreds of patients in the hospitals it stormed.</p></blockquote><p>In
fact, Sari adds, “This point does not reflect real seriousness, as Biden
and Blinken stated in November that there were no red lines that would
prevent military support for Israel against Hamas.”</p><p>Journalist
Dirani agrees, reflecting growing Arab opinion that the US is only
stage-managing matters and shows little intent to pressure Tel Aviv into
a resolution of this brutal war:</p><blockquote><p>Biden wants to tell
Netanyahu that instead of committing 100 massacres a day in Rafah, he
should commit 90 massacres. This is why he did not reach 100, meaning
that the massacres should be commensurate with America’s brutality and
not with Netanyahu’s well-known brutality.</p></blockquote><p>Dirani
further assesses, based on their statements, that all Resistance Axis
factions understand the US is complicit in the Gaza genocide and is
ultimately the root cause of all tragedies, scourges, and wars in the
region. </p><p>Finger-pointing aside, this perception of US complicity
in Gaza is growing fast in global discourse. Efforts to divest from and
boycott Israel are on the rise; many of these targets are weapons
factories and transport and logistics firms. </p><p>If Israel proceeds
with an invasion of Rafah, the repercussions could be severe, leading to
the wholesale collapse of US interests in West Asia. As Yemen’s
waterway blockades, Iranian strikes, and strategic military operations
and salvos from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Palestinian resistance, and the
Iraqi resistance have demonstrated, today it is the leaders of the Axis
who are setting those red lines, not western powers.</p></span></div></div></div></div>
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