The Shift: Biden team admits they won’t get ceasefire done

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that multiple U.S. officials are admitting a ceasefire will not be reached during the remainder of Joe Biden’s presidency.

“Well, at the moment, we don’t feel like we are in a position, if we put something down today, to get both sides to say yes to it,” admits National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

This isn’t exactly surprising. It was always difficult to take the administration’s push for a ceasefire seriously as it has continued to supply Israel with weapons. Republicans and some pro-Israel Democrats made a big stink about Biden temporarily suspending a single ammunition shipment, but Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza has continued for nearly a year without interruption.

At the New York Times, David Sanger says Biden is “working against the clock” with just four months left in his presidency:

For a year now, Mr. Biden has warned publicly and privately about the need to avoid a regional war, one that could easily escalate into direct conflict between Israel and Iran. His caution was a major topic of conversation when he traveled to Israel days after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, both to promise Israel that America would stand by it, and to caution against making the same mistakes the United States made after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Biden even held on to hope for the transformative peace deal for the Middle East that he thought was within grasp a year ago, believing it could survive even as the war between Hamas and Israel tore at its foundations.

Now, Mr. Biden’s aides say, the president is beginning to acknowledge that he is simply running out of time. With only four months left in office, the chances of a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas look dimmer than at any time since Mr. Biden laid out a plan at the beginning of the summer. And the risk of a wider war has never looked greater.

Like most mainstream reporting on this issue, Sanger fails to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Biden has never established any sort of red line with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. He’s continued to send Israel weapons through all its worst atrocities and he continues to send them weapons as the death toll mounts in Lebanon. He has neglected to wield this obvious leverage to force ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has publicly declared that he will not engage in ceasefire talks for the next 40 days and will not entertain any diplomatic ideas about Lebanon. In addition to Israel’s clear colonial goals, there’s also the issue of Bibi’s political survival and if he can help Trump win the presidency, all the better.

Here’s Alon Pinkas in Haaretz: “(Netanyahu) has a vested interest in prolonging the war for his political survival and in making it an election issue that could potentially harm Vice President Kamala Harris. It seems that the U.S. finally and very belatedly realized it last week, which is why, however unfortunate, there is little the U.S. will do until the election, unless it’s forced to act in the case of a major escalation.”

It’s obviously hard to take the last bit seriously unless you somehow don’t consider what’s happened in Lebanon to be a major escalation.

Eygi Investigation

Last week State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Israel’s initial findings on the killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26 year-old Turkish-American, do not exonerate Israeli forces.

“If the first investigation plays out… and we are not satisfied, we will of course look at whether any other measures are appropriate,” said Miller.

It’s unclear how seriously people should take this claim, as there’s not exactly a huge amount of evidence to suggest that the U.S. would ever open its own independent investigation.

Before Eygi’s funeral, her father identified U.S. bias toward Israel as the reason there hasn’t been a probe.

There have been repeated domestic calls for an independent investigation. Earlier this month Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) sent supporters an email calling for one.

“We must hold Israel to the same standards as we do other governments; we must follow U.S. and international laws that demand an end to arming any governments committing human rights abuses and war crimes,” it declared. “We will not rest until there is justice for Ayşenur and others killed by the U.S-backed Israeli government with American weapons. We will continue demanding an arms embargo and Palestinian liberation.”

Protesters have also gathered outside the Justice Department to demand action.

Turkey now says its submitting evidence on Eygi’s killing to international courts.

“We will both bring Aysenur’s reports to the United Nations Security Council’s agenda, and submit our sister Aysenur’s reports and evidence to the International Court of Justice, where the genocide case is continuing,” Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc told reporters. “We will also submit Aysenur’s evidence to the ongoing investigation about Israeli aggressors at the International Criminal Court.”