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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://theintercept.com/2024/08/22/biden-harris-israel-ceasefire-gaza/">theintercept.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The U.S.-Led Ceasefire Talks Are Just Buying More Time for Israel’s Genocide</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Sunjeev Bery</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">August 22, 2024<br></div>
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<img src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/GettyImages-2162874125_03d205.jpg?fit=1280%2C852&w=1200" alt="Vice President Kamala Harris poses with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at White House on July 25, 2024." width="408" height="271" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
<span>Vice President Kamala Harris poses with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on July 25, 2024.</span>
<span>Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom(GPO)/Handout/Anadolu/Getty Images</span>
<p><span>For anyone paying</span> attention, it is now abundantly clear that the U.S.-led Gaza ceasefire talks have become a tool for the perpetuation of <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">Israel’s genocidal war</a>. What began as a liberatory demand by <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolution/786" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">Rep. Cori Bush</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/us/jewish-palestinian-protest-israel-gaza/index.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">grassroots </a>peace <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/11/11/palestine-israel-protests-ceasefire-antisemitic/">advocates</a>
has now been fully co-opted by President Joe Biden, Vice President
Kamala Harris, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The
so-called ceasefire negotiations are a form of camouflage that is being
deployed by Biden and Harris to distract from the reality of their
support for Israel’s mass atrocities <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147976" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">in Gaza</a>.</p>
<p>To even use the word “ceasefire” to describe what the Biden
administration is pursuing is itself a form of linguistic violence. The
latest draft “ceasefire” proposal announced by U.S. Secretary of State
Antony Blinken essentially endorses <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/world/middleeast/gaza-ceasefire-proposal-israel-hamas.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">continued Israeli occupation of Gaza</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/world/middleeast/gaza-ceasefire-proposal-israel-hamas.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">with no permanent cessation of war</a>. But even this was apparently too much of a concession for Netanyahu, which is why he reportedly continues to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6ynq1jwdqo" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">undermine it</a>. Meanwhile, it was just one week ago that the State Department <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/blinken-approves-20-billion-israel-223555559.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFGlZ7T8bCM6w6uFt-ZSOiZU-x1SoBpvMwSOa1DSdAZLaMG__SPZzaiXWjxtURuxoMq0bWbTjaH-Tvu9lGLPwDjWZR-n4otHLVFl0oOUyNwvZJRUti0jH_8N8AvQc18xYvkjFOlgXo9L46O551INfQ6kVHDK1VU6ujXu_9CVkNaO" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">announced</a> the sale of another $20 billion in U.S. weapons to Israel.</p>
<p>The bad-faith terms of the latest proposal are just the beginning.
Hamas is unlikely to agree to the terrible new conditions that Blinken
has put on the table, and that rejection will in turn enable Biden,
Harris, Blinken, and Netanyahu to further blame Hamas for “rejecting
peace.” This will then buy Netanyahu more time to continue bombing, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/03/13/intercepted-gaza-mass-starvation/">starving</a>, and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/06/14/rafah-tent-massacre-israel-gaza/">killing</a>
Palestinians. Then the cycle will repeat itself again, with Blinken
soon returning to the Middle East for yet another round of so-called
ceasefire negotiations, while the U.S. continues to send Israel even
more weapons for its war.</p>
<p>Breaking this cynical cycle requires getting honest about Biden and
Harris’s roles in this blood-soaked charade. While Biden is ultimately
responsible for America’s full-tilt support for Israel’s violence,
Harris has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/us/politics/harris-israel-arms-embargo.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">repeatedly supported</a>
the president’s continued arming of Israel. And through a fraudulent
and never-ending ceasefire negotiation process, both Biden and Harris
have enabled the broader Democratic Party to avoid acknowledging the
horrifying reality of their own leaders’ <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-has-undeniable-complicity-gaza-war-killings-say-former-us-officials-2024-07-03/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">responsibility for a genocide</a>.</p>
<div><p>One of the worst examples of this came earlier this week, when progressive icon Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/08/20/dnc-democrats-gaza-genocide-silence/">stood at the podium</a> of the Democratic National Convention on Monday and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/08/21/dnc-aoc-ilhan-omar-kamala-harris-gaza/">wrongly praised</a>
Harris for “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and
bringing hostages home.” Ocasio-Cortez offered Democratic voters the
seductive fiction of Harris as a vice president who is doing something
other than enabling the continued <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/05/09/israel-military-teenagers-ceasefire-mesarvot/">supply of U.S. weapons</a>
for the daily massacre of Palestinian civilians. By doing so,
Ocasio-Cortez became a willing political accomplice to the Biden/Harris
policy of supporting Israel’s genocidal war.</p></div>
<p><span>One driving force</span> for all of this is the pro-Israel lobby, with its vast network of high-net-worth donors. Many<a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/01/20/israel-aipac-house-mike-johnson/"> politicians</a> stick to the lobby’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/05/08/rafah-israel-invasion-aipac-lobby/">talking points</a> in order to avoid its <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/08/02/michigan-primary-andy-levin-results-aipac/">guillotine</a>. They
would rather pretend that something positive is happening than face the
wrath that Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush experienced when that same
pro-Israel donor network deployed <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/08/06/aipac-cori-bush-election-results-wesley-bell/">millions</a> of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/06/26/jamaal-bowman-primary-aipac-latimer/">dollars</a> to defeat them in their recent Democratic primaries. </p>
<p>These pro-Israel lobbying groups and donor networks have built a bipartisan reality of pro-Israel <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/04/04/republicans-congress-palestine-israel-double-standard/">U.S. politicians</a> who now enable the worst impulses in Israeli <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/everything-is-legitimate-israeli-leaders-defend-soldiers-accused-of-rape" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">politics</a>, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/02/netanyahu-gaza-palestinians-war-israeli-society/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">culture</a>, and <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/majority-israelis-prison-rape-no-criminal-charges" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">society</a>. Israel does not have to come to terms with its own genocidal mania because its sugar daddy, the United States, will <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/19/a-history-of-the-us-blocking-un-resolutions-against-israel" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">protect it</a>
from all consequences. And despite this, or perhaps because of it,
Biden and Harris are able to continue to posture as brokers of peace
while sending billions of dollars in weapons to Israel’s soldiers. To
believe that Biden, Harris, and Blinken can (or will) push for a real
ceasefire is to accept the fantasy that they can be advocates for peace
when they are already the primary enablers of genocide. </p>
<p>This fantasy has deep roots that go back to the so-called <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/oslo-accords-anniversary-palestine/">Oslo peace process</a>, which gave Israel <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/oslo-accords-palestinian-women-first-intifada-naila-and-the-uprising/">decades of time </a>to steal Palestinian land and expand its borders by <a href="https://peacenow.org.il/en/30-years-after-oslo-the-data-that-shows-how-the-settlements-proliferated-following-the-oslo-accords" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">building Jewish Israeli settlements</a> across the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani recently spelled all of this out when he <a href="https://x.com/mouinrabbani/status/1824689411310690482?s=46&t=XvtYvPx6MWJUQFKo9c59fA" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">described the current</a>
ceasefire talks as “an Oslo process for genocide … Just as Oslo served
as the essential fig leaf enabling Israel to intensify settlement
expansion and annexationist policies, while Washington ran interference
for Israel with a ‘peace process’ designed to go nowhere.”</p>
<p>Peace advocates who continue to call for a ceasefire now risk
becoming props for the Biden/Harris playbook. The broader American
public will likely find it difficult to differentiate between an
activist demand for a ceasefire and the politicians who nod in
duplicitous agreement while enabling the opposite. By using the same
abused word, the difference between what peace advocates are calling for
and what the Biden administration is actually doing becomes harder to
understand.</p>
<blockquote><p>To believe that Biden and Harris push for a real
ceasefire is to accept the fantasy that they can be advocates for peace
when they are already the primary enablers of genocide. </p></blockquote>
<p>The blunt reality is that Biden and Harris must be pushed to enact a
full arms embargo on Israel and end U.S. support for Israel’s genocide
of Palestinians. That may seem too politically difficult to achieve, but
to continue to talk of ceasefires is to unwittingly enable Israel’s
genocide by failing to accurately describe what the U.S. is actually
doing.</p>
<p>So long as Kamala Harris and her surrogates have the freedom to stand
at a DNC podium and pretend that they are pushing for peace, it will be
easy for Biden and Harris to continue supporting the slaughter of
Palestinians. If Harris is elected as the next president of the United
States, no one should expect that U.S. foreign policy will magically
change. Without external pressure, a Harris White House is likely to
continue supporting Israel’s destruction of Palestinian society, all
while proudly waving the banner of “peace.”</p>
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