It seems that the attempt to put down Israel's war on Gaza has become a major electoral card for President Joe Biden. How does the White House resident seek to convince Benjamin Netanyahu?

The American newspaper The Washington Post published an article entitled “The Moment of Truth in the Middle East,” monitoring the three dimensions of Biden’s strategy aimed at putting out the Gaza fire before it expands and turns into a broader conflict.

Since the “Al-Aqsa Flood” military operation, on October 7, Israel has launched an air and naval bombardment on the Gaza Strip, followed by a ground invasion, causing more than 27 thousand martyrs, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians, women and children. It also destroyed the entire infrastructure of the sector.

“Al-Aqsa Flood” is the name given by the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” to the comprehensive military operation, which began at dawn on October 7, in response to “the continuing Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people,” which crossed all red lines since the most extremist government took office in Israel in late 2022.

Saudi relations with Israel

The Washington Post article describes Biden's plan as a desperate attempt to extinguish a raging fire threatening the Middle East: “Imagine the Middle East as a billiard table surrounded by burning fires. And in the midst of this hell, the United States of America is about to launch a complex attempt to launch a three-ball strike, and these three balls are “Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Hamas.”

This is the first element in Biden's strategy, and if this bold element succeeds, "the water sprinklers can be turned on and the fires can be extinguished" before they devour the table or the Middle East. But the second element is the presence of some imaginary balls that can explode, and the third element is time, of which “there is not much of it anymore.”

Although this endeavor sounds like a game in a Las Vegas casino, it represents an apt metaphor for the intense diplomatic push on the part of the Biden administration recently. The success of Biden's game may seem unlikely, but this high-risk strike may be the best way to extinguish the hell of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

Away from the imaginary analogies, on the ground, Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, intends to return to the Middle East soon, and this will be his sixth tour since the outbreak of the war.

According to the Washington Post article, Blinken will likely begin this tour from Saudi Arabia, where he hopes to renew the pledge he received from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to normalize relations with Israel. But the Crown Prince's promise was conditional on Israel ending its war on Gaza and that the occupation commit to establishing an independent Palestinian state that would eventually include the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Blinken's second stop is likely to be Israel, where he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who desperately wants to reach a peace agreement with the Saudi leader, but at the same time Netanyahu and his extremist government coalition reject the Saudi conditions of a rapid end to the aggression against Gaza and an announcement of approval for a path that leads to the establishment of the Palestinian state.

How does Biden expect to convince Netanyahu?

If Netanyahu and his government openly refuse to stop the war or have any chance of establishing a Palestinian state, then how does Biden expect to convince the Israeli prime minister? Biden wants to make Netanyahu an offer that his coalition cannot accept politically, but the prime minister, whose legacy as a historic Israeli leader has been shattered, may not personally be able to resist this offer, according to the Washington Post article.

If Netanyahu agrees to the Saudi proposal, his ruling coalition will collapse and the prime minister will then need to find new partners, and searching for these partners may not be a very difficult task, in light of the presence of some opposition leaders, such as Naftali Bennett, who has already announced his willingness to join to the government as an alternative to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, both of whom are prominent opponents of stopping the war. If Netanyahu himself rejects the offer, his government may be overthrown by competitors who adopt the American formula for ending the war.

Martin Indyk, who twice served as US ambassador to Israel and is considered by many in Washington to be the wisest American observer when it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict, used his own colorful metaphor to describe the US diplomatic maneuvering: “Biden wants to make Bibi understand the mission and accept it (and close the deal), or make way for another government,” according to the American newspaper.

The Washington Post article addresses the next step in this scenario, through which the Biden administration hopes that the impasse will be opened. The question here is: What is the possibility of a handshake between Netanyahu and the Saudi Crown Prince? “You might think the chances of this happening are completely non-existent, given Netanyahu's public and repeated rejection of the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

But Netanyahu realizes that he faces a serious choice, and that he will weigh the political factors carefully, and to be frank, becoming a peacemaker with the Saudis may be the only way for Netanyahu to avoid the lasting shame caused by the October 7 attack (the Al-Aqsa flood)” according to a Washington Post article.

Here we come to another extremely important element for the success of Biden’s game, which is the time factor, as the United States informed Israel that the agreement to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia should begin within the next two months, partly because the Crown Prince is demanding, as part of the normalization package, a treaty that provides similar guarantees. With NATO guarantees for Saudi security.

American election calculations

The time factor is directly related to the US elections next November, which means that such a deal may obtain approval by the Senate, where the Democrats have the majority, by June. However, if the deal is delayed beyond that time, it will be buried. Under campaign politics, Washington Post says in its article.

Returning to the scenario of hitting the three balls on the billiard table, we find that things have not yet reached the most difficult part, as none of this complex diplomacy can truly begin until after the end of the war on Gaza, that is, the prisoner exchange deal to stop the war.

In this context, CIA Director William Burns and White House Assistant Brett McGurk, under the guidance of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, were working with Israeli officials and Qatari and Egyptian mediators to formulate a prisoner release deal.

This deal will be a phased prisoner exchange and a ceasefire. Israel may give the matter another name, such as a freeze or an extended halt. It seems that this hostage deal is excitingly close, according to American, Israeli and Arab sources.

It may take weeks to finalize the details of the deal, but once the war stops, widespread de-escalation will be possible: the Saudis may move toward normalization, a border agreement between Israel and Lebanon may become possible, and progress toward Palestinian statehood could begin in Ultimately, says the Washington Post.

The newspaper article quoted one of the people involved in the negotiations as saying: “The only way to calm Gaza is a hostage deal,” stressing that this is the only key to extinguishing the war, which is pushing the entire Middle East to the brink of all-out war.

The reason this person involved in the negotiations is optimistic is because the Israelis consider the release of the hostages a top priority after the shock of the Al-Aqsa flood attack. Israel still does not have coherent plans for the “day after” the end of the war. Its plan to run Gaza — which includes enlisting the help of tribes, merchants, and local power brokers — appears to be a formula for creating an ungoverned, chaotic enclave on Israel's borders, according to the Washington Post article.

US officials hope Israel will eventually acknowledge that the only sound plan is a US-backed mission to train the “revitalized” Palestinian Authority security forces – which officials have begun describing as the “Palestinian National Army” and that a force could be ready within eight months to a year.

There is also the problem of stopping the violence of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem, in addition to transferring up to 200,000 settlers from the future Palestinian state to within Israel’s borders. In this context, Biden took a strong step on Thursday, February 1, by imposing sanctions on four Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank who committed acts of violence against Palestinians.

The move may be just the beginning, but it could bolster US credibility with the Palestinians as a peace broker. “The moment of truth has not yet come,” one official involved in the complex negotiations told the Washington Post, but it is coming.

The bottom line here is that what American diplomats envision is an unworkable structure with unstable partners, risky bets and untested resolve — and an American president who has a strategic vision but is politically weak. There are a lot of things that could go wrong, but given the bleak alternatives, it's worth a try.

Source: Sama News