With the Israel-Hamas war deep into its fourth month, U.S. diplomats are hard at work trying to hammer out another truce in order to accelerate hostage releases and provide some respite for the more than 2 million Palestinians stuck in Gaza.
Brett McGurk, President Joe Biden's top Middle East adviser, is traveling to Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates this week in the hopes of getting truce talks going again after a nearly two-month hiatus. Multiple draft agreements are on the table. The Israelis reportedly offered Hamas a two-month freeze in the fighting in exchange for the return of the 100 hostages who remain in Hamas' custody. Another proposal, spearheaded by Arab-majority states, is far more idealistic in that it seeks a permanent ceasefire and dangles the possible normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel as an incentive for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to start a serious negotiating process over the establishment of a Palestinian state.
While Netanyahu would love nothing more than to resurrect his bleak political future by bringing the Middle East's most powerful country onside, he doesn't believe that the benefits of such a groundbreaking diplomatic agreement would outweigh the costs of a Palestinian state. Everything Netanyahu has done and said over the last three and a half months, and his entire political career, suggests that a Palestinian state is a pipe dream as long as he's in office (and given the declining support among the Israeli public for a two-state solution, it might not be possible after he leaves office either). The Biden administration's stance notwithstanding, Netanyahu now makes it a habit to remind Israelis that he was against the Oslo Process all along and is the only man standing in the way of a Palestinian state. "In any future arrangement ... Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan," Netanyahu said in a news conference last week. "This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do?"
As long as Netanyahu continues to exhibit stubbornness on the issue, Washington's diplomatic efforts will be stuck. U.S. diplomats may be able to pull a rabbit out of their hat and solidify another humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas—and a future truce might even be longer than the initial week-long arrangement the parties signed up to in late November. Unless the current Israeli government changes its spots and ends its war in Gaza, the U.S. will have to deal with multiple flashpoints in the Middle East that show no signs of simmering down anytime soon.
The U.S. has taken targeted military action against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Yemen on multiple occasions this week. On Jan. 23, the U.S. struck three Kataib Hezbollah militia facilities in Iraq several days after 10 rockets and seven ballistic missiles were fired toward the Ain al-Asad airbase, where U.S. forces are stationed. Two of those projectiles struck the base itself, resulting in injuries to U.S. and Iraqi military personnel.
U.S. aircraft, submarines, and surface vessels have bombed Houthi positions in Yemen so many times recently that it's difficult to keep a running tally. On Jan. 22, the U.S. and U.K. hit eight Houthi military sites in what U.S. Central Command said was an operation to degrade the group's capability to conduct missile and drone attacks against civilian tankers transiting the Red Sea. The U.S. targeted two other Houthi sites the next day, this time against anti-ship missiles that were aimed at the southern Red Sea. The Houthi attacks, however, keep on coming—something that shouldn't be surprising to anyone who has an even limited understanding of how the group operates. On Jan. 24, the Houthis fired three anti-ship missiles toward the M/V Maersk Detroit, a U.S.-flagged and owned container ship. No damage was reported, but you can bet that the Biden administration will respond to this attack in much the same way it responded to prior incidents: with yet another round of strikes.
U.S. and U.K. leaders dismiss the idea that the events occurring in Yemen and Iraq have anything to do with the war in Gaza. U.S. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller told reporters that linking the two theaters "is a bit absurd." U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has ordered U.K. forces to participate in two rounds of strikes against the Houthis thus far, had a similar message in the House of Commons this week, going as far as to allege that "those who make that link do the Houthis' work for them."
Yet in the grand scheme, it's irrelevant whether Washington and London accept the premise or not. Opinions don't matter. The only thing that really matters is reality. And the reality is that the Houthis have had a longstanding position since October that the attacks in the Red Sea will continue as long as the war in Gaza persists. While the Iraqi militias have their own agendas (they want U.S. troops to leave Iraq regardless of what happens in Gaza), it's hard to envision attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria ending as long as the Israel-Hamas war continues apace.
The Biden administration ignores the linkage as its own peril.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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