How the U.S. brokered ceasefire shows us Israel is a pet project, not an ally 

“Who books credit for this Mr. President, you or Trump?” 

“Is that a joke?”

The final words hung in the air as President Joe Biden scoffed, turned his back to the journalist, and walked away, drawing his announcement of the ceasefire to a tense and awkward close. 

During his address, Kamala Harris stood to Biden’s right and stared at the camera without breaking her gaze, looking solemn and proud, as though it really was her, Biden, and Antony Blinken’s (who flanked Biden’s left during the address) specific efforts that brokered the ceasefire. 

The truth is, we all know that wasn’t the case. Biden’s avoidance of ongoing popular unrest and global pressures to take more action disqualified him from running again, as demonstrated in countless polls. During her campaign, Harris did nothing to challenge her predecessor and instead doubled down on condemning Palestinian protestors at the DNC. This weakness ultimately lost her the election as well. 

That being said, did Donald Trump actually do anything? Yes, he sent an envoy that aggressively and very publicly pushed in a way Biden’s team did not. Trump made brash declarations that Biden was unwilling to. But, in the end, Biden and many analysts are right: the terms of the ceasefire are relatively similar to the ones rejected by Netanyahu in May. So, who was the successful broker? Was there one? Or was Israel finally unable to say no to its daddy? 

Despite the media’s focus on the battle between the two, the truth is that it was the United States of America that was successful in finally compelling Israel’s surrender. It was not anymore Biden than it was Trump, it was the U.S. exercising its overall imperial control that forced the hand of the Zionist entity. In the process, the ceasefire negotiations illustrated the reality that while perhaps a seemingly more favored imperial possession, Israel is simply part of a long pattern of U.S. imperial control that selectively promotes, funds, emboldens, undercuts, or ends the political buoyancy of countries around the world.

An analysis of the U.S./Zionist relationship in the context of the Gaza genocide reveals the material conditions that define the U.S.’s imperial relations including when the U.S. will sacrifice Zionist interests for its own.

Behind the U.S.-Israel relationship  

The U.S. has been a champion of Zionism from its onset. Since the launch of the most recent genocide, there has been widespread discussion of U.S./ Zionist relations to illustrate how crucial U.S. support is to Zionist functionality. While the circulation of this narrative is essential to expose the depths of U.S./Zionist collusion, it is also paramount to make it known that the relationship has its limitations. Though few and far between, and often obscured, there are times the U.S. has been at odds with the Zionist entity and acted in its own interest. 

There is overwhelming documentation of the United States’ longstanding and boundless support for the Zionist entity since the mid-20th century. Zionists possess an extensive lobby in the U.S. that has made countless gains for the Zionist government. Relatedly, Zionist interests are deeply embedded in virtually every sector of U.S. functionality: academia, business, pop culture, scientific research and production (environmentalism, medicine, etc), weapons manufacturing, and so on. There is not a single aspect of U.S. infrastructure that is absolved from upholding Zionism in some shape or form whether cultural, economic, or political. None of this is new nor does it require much digging or citations. 

That being said, what is often less discussed is whether or not the Zionist entity’s relationship with the United States is egalitarian and entirely foolproof. For the most part, compared to other countries much more clearly subordinate to the U.S., the Zionist entity is often portrayed as a self-assured, assertive, and relatively unfettered body that has the authority to make its own decisions instead of adhering to the U.S. 

This gap is understandable – the Zionist entity is the United State’s premier political and military entry point to the region and is unparalleled in the role it has and continues to serve. When the United States became a global superpower after WWII, its choice to back the Zionist cause at that time was an intentional one that gave it unbridled access to the region. To this day, their interests often overlap- when the Zionist entity profits, so does the U.S.. Whether it is the arms industry, trade with settlements, or governmental programming that creates government jobs and promotes U.S. supremacy in the region, there is almost no way the Zionist entity profits without the U.S. also doing so.

Over time, because their interests have remained generally aligned with priceless rewards, the moments where there have been tensions often go under the radar. For example, in 1956, President Eisenhower criticized the Zionist occupation of Gaza to which the Zionist entity ultimately conceded. The U.S. opposed it because they feared it would impact their access to Arab oil. In both the 20th and 21st centuries, a slew of Zionist espionage cases have sustained an ongoing sore point between the U.S. and the Zionist entity. Though there are other examples, the point is that the tensions between the Zionist entity and the U.S. are often omitted, reifying the notion that their partnership is impenetrable. 

The reality has been on display since October 2023 as well. The fact of the matter is that due to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the U.S. has been hemorrhaging unprecedented amounts of aid. Because of Israel’s countless military losses, the U.S. was forced to send more aid than it has ever sent to the Zionist entity in one year and also forcing the US to risk non-compliance with their own trade standards to maintain Israeli bonds. Similarly, the Zionist entity’s economy was severely devastated by the genocide, something the U.S. also had to account for in its aid. Beyond finances, the U.S. sacrificed significant amounts of political clout on the global scale¹ during 2024 and the Zionist entity lost a slew of relations for their aggressive commitment to maintain the genocide, also compounding pressure on the U.S. to maintain the entity’s financial and political position. 

Thus far, the United States’s willingness to center its own interests in ways that de-prioritize the top choice of the Zionist agenda has been okay because the decisions have never been at a total detriment to the Zionist entity. While some decisions are not to their liking, the net gain has been and is always substantial. This is also why on both ends there is less emphasis on the tensions that have and currently still exist- they pale in comparison to the hoards of wealth the two generate through their partnership. 

Genocide revealed imperial tensions  

When we focus on how severe a liability the Zionist entity has been for the U.S. this past year, it becomes much easier to understand that the relationship between the United States and the Zionist entity is impermanent. It also becomes easier to recognize that the U.S.’s support for the Zionist entity is not without calculations of its own interests. 

In the words of Tara Alami, “The question of whether the Zionist state is a U.S. proxy is less about the sort of diplomatic pressure that exists and more about whether the relationship between the two meets certain structural economic and military criteria.” 

The genocide of this past year and the current ceasefire agreement are the perfect entry point into the distinction Alami is raising. Last week, Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to resign from Netanyahu’s cabinet and take his entire party with him if the ceasefire is to go into effect, a promise they all made good on since. This tension is a climax of what has been an ongoing unraveling of the Zionist military and government. In June 2024, Benny Gantz resigned from the Zionist war cabinet in protest of what he considered an endangering of Zionist stature for Netanyahu’s political career. A slew of military and security officers resigned throughout 2024 in response to intelligence failures and imminent loss. Settlers have protested in the thousands countless times since the launch of the genocide, increasing internal tensions between the Zionist government and its constituents.  

Over the past year, the U.S. condemned the genocide (however meekly) while continuing to fund it. This paired with the repeated insolence of the Zionist entity is often pointed to as an indicator of the US’s unequivocal support for Zionism. However, though the U.S. allowed for the Zionist entity to continue its efforts well past the timeline it outlined, it ultimately was the one allowing it. And, it stopped it to switch gears when it decided it reached its own breaking point. It is this subtlety that we must uplift. Because, however slight, what it reveals is that the United States’ apparent deference to the Zionist entity is in fact its own complex dominance. 

The disarray the genocide has spurred reveals to us that Zionist interests greatly vary, sometimes clash, and are coming to a major conflict in light of the past year, only pointing to more and more political polarization among current leadership. Given this backdrop, it becomes clear that the U.S.’s calculations de-prioritized Zionist political equilibrium for its own gain. The upheaval of the current government is irrelevant to U.S. interests because so long as the overall colonial and imperial aspects of the project are intact, then what the U.S. requires for its partnership with the Zionist entity is fulfilled. 

The West Bank, aid economies, and Palestine’s future

Taking the time to dissect the particularities of the U.S./Zionist relationship provides us with a more accurate understanding of the material conditions that exist, what is at stake for who, and when the U.S. will sacrifice Zionist interests for its own. This cognizance in turn lays the groundwork for more reliable predictions of what is to come with regard to Palestine, Arab countries, and imperial competition between the U.S., China, and Russia.   

For example, though there is ample press discussing the supposed success of the ceasefire and the alleged loss the Zionist entity incurs from it, the fact of the matter is the US does have many plans for Zionist expansion. Trump’s legacy from his first term includes declaring Jerusalem the Zionist entity’s capital. The Abraham Accords secured normalization with the Zionist entity from Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan. Trade between Arab countries and the Zionist entity more than doubled within the first year of the Accords which directly fed back into US global trade while also mitigating Chinese economic influence on normalized countries, a driving force for U.S. instigation of the Abraham Accords. Security coordination also significantly increased. The UAE not only expanded its utilization of Zionist technologies on its own constituents, however, it directly invested in the Zionist entity. Lastly, US brokered normalization between Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity is on the horizon but directly depends on the successful enactment of a ceasefire.

Furthermore, Donald Trump, along with Mike Huckabee, is predicted to intensify and significantly advance US support for settlements in the West Bank, a continuation of his previous term’s efforts. With so much emphasis on Gaza as a humanitarian issue in this past year, the struggles facing those in the West Bank have been tremendously understated which in turn leave it all the more vulnerable to the coming administration. Zionists arrested over 12,000 people following October 7. There were over 1,000 recorded settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. Finally, Zionists have pushed to claim the largest amount of land since Oslo: nearly 6,000 acres in the West Bank. The invisibilization of this widespread repression and the unfathomable land grabs have set the stage for the return of a Trump administration to resume and advance economic expansion for its own gain. 

Relatedly, rebuilding efforts in Gaza are projected to be a lucrative economic opportunity for the United States and other foreign powers. Much like Oslo served as the launch point for concretizing the structural financial dispossession of Palestine, it is easy to predict how this forthcoming era of “rebuilding Gaza” will accelerate Palestine’s economic destitution. After Oslo in the 1990’s, much of Palestine’s infrastructure was dissolved to make way for Zionist control- electricity, water, militarization, and economic production are all in the hands of the Zionists. This paved the way for the NGO-ization of Palestine, which slowly shifted civil society away from autonomy and self-management toward charity, resource dependency, and outsourced labor. This compounded with the Zionist siege on Gaza that began in 2007 has significantly curtailed the autonomous development of Gazan infrastructure. 

Between the Abraham Accords, attempted West Bank annexation, and forthcoming rebuilding efforts in Gaza, two key points become painstakingly clear. First, a ceasefire with Gaza is not an end to the colonial or imperial devastation of Palestinian land, merely a transition into a new socioeconomic phase of imperial/colonial encroachment. Second, the U.S. overrode Zionist political interests to uphold its own intentions of tightening its economic chokehold on Palestine and the Arab world- this was not at the complete expense of the Zionist entity but does signal to us the two have contradictory interests that require us to be vigilant in our political calculations of who is running the show and what they intend to do with the actors involved. Ultimately, this moment is only the beginning of the next phase, one that will not wait for the dust to settle from this past year but instead rely on the chaos to veil accelerated, insidious actions. We must pay attention now more than ever.

Notes

1. The US was vetoed by Russia and China, a major symbolic hit given the context and has globally declined in standing ↩︎