In an interview with the Israeli outlet Channel 13, former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller admitted that the Israeli government purposely tanked ceasefire negotiations on multiple occasions during the Biden era.
One example cited by Miller is April 2024, shortly after Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to invade Rafah.
Miller says the Israeli government made the threat shortly after the U.S. had submitted a proposal to Hamas. Biden gave a speech about the proposal, but purposely kept the details from Netanyahu, fearing that he would torpedo the deal.
“We told the government of Israel only an hour or two before the speech because, frankly, we spent the last few months seeing the government of Israel, at times, try and sabotage an approach to get to a ceasefire, and we were determined not to let that happen here,” said Miller.
The Israeli Prime Minister ended up undermining the process anyway, telling reporters that the deal negotiated by Biden wasn’t the same one that he had agreed to.
When deal was almost broached again in July, Netanyahu began insisting that Israel could not accept terms that required troops to pull out of the Philadelphi Corridor.
“That maybe was the most frustrating of all, because we were so close to getting a deal that could have certainly brought hostages home and maybe ended the war once and for all,” said Miller. ““It was our best chance to get a deal. Hamas, for the first time, was feeling pressured to agree. We were really close to a deal, and the prime minister added these new conditions.”
You’d think this kind of rogue behavior from Israel would inspire the most powerful country in the world to take some direct, public action, but no.
Miller insists Israeli recalcitrance had to be kept under wraps because such information could somehow benefit Hamas.
“There were times that we very much wanted to go public and make clear that we thought the prime minister was being completely intransigent and making it tougher to get a deal but we discussed it amongst ourselves, and we made the decision that it wouldn’t accomplish anything” insisted Miller.
Miller claims that Hamas had backed out of deals multiple times after detecting tension between the Biden administration and Israel.
“We wanted to speak very toughly to the government of Israel behind closed doors, but ultimately not do anything that we thought would make it harder to get to a deal,” he added.
It’s important to remember what Miller was telling the press while Israel was purposely impeding a ceasefire.
Here’s what he told reporters shortly before the Trump team took over:
So that’s just not what we’ve seen. I can tell you, as a party to these negotiations – and I think it’s a fundamental misreading of the situation. It has not been Israel that has been the intransigent party that has kept us from getting to a deal for many, many months. That’s not to say that Israel agreed to every condition that was put forward by Hamas, the conditions that were put forward by us. Of course they haven’t. It’s a negotiation and you wouldn’t expect them too.
But it has been Hamas, fundamentally, that has been unwilling to agree to a deal really going back to August, and at times was even unwilling to negotiate and then, as I said, times they were unable to negotiate because they didn’t have a leader in place.
Does Miller have any regrets? No.
“When you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion,” he told Channel 13. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government.”
MTG and Gaza
Last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted a lengthy tweet about the conditions in Gaza.
“If America was being bombed day and night because of something horrific our government did, and many innocent Americans and American children were being killed and traumatically injured, and we begged for mercy, but the rest of the world said, ‘Americans voted for their government so they deserve it, their government is bad so all Americans are bad, therefore this is what they get and must be done…’ how would you feel? What would you think? What would you do?” she wrote.
“U.S. taxpayers fund Israel $3.8 billion annually for military aid,” Greene continued. “That means every U.S. tax payer is contributing to Israel’s military actions. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with,” she continued. “And I will not be silent about it.”
Days before, Greene had blasted the State Department for halting medical-humanitarian visas for injured Gazans.
It’s hard to make sense of Greene. She’s called for student activists to be deported, condemned the BDS movement, voted to censure Rashida Tlaib over “antisemitic activity,” and has said a lot of Islamophobic things throughout the years.
It’s always unclear what lawmakers actually believe and what they say to generate publicity or votes. In this sense, Greene is pretty interesting. She obviously doesn’t represent an emerging pro-Palestine bloc within the Republican Party, but she clearly thinks that these newfound positions will increase her popularity.
She also doesn’t think these kinds of tweets will hurt her in Georgia’s 14th district, where Trump prevailed with 68% of the vote. As I mentioned in a recent newsletter, there’s a certain segment of “MAGA” that takes Trump’s rhetoric about “America First” seriously and is receptive to arguments about taxpayer money going to a foreign country.
Trump is now claiming that Israel’s war on Gaza will be wrapped up in the next 3 weeks, but there’s obviously no evidence to support that assertion.
Odds & Ends
🇵🇸 Gaza is the Compass: Second annual People’s Conference for Palestine
🇮🇱 Israeli army says it ‘does not target’ journalists, after targeting and killing 5 journalists
🏫 Stop Censoring Palestine: A public call for accountability at the Harvard Education Publishing Group
🗳️ DNC vote on Israel arms embargo will be the next Democratic Party showdown over Palestine
🧑🏫 In These Times: In Monumental Vote, NEA Teachers Join Chorus Against ADL
🚫 Responsible Statecraft: Does the House have the grit to ‘Block the Bombs’ to Israel?
💬 Responsible Statecraft: More US lawmakers publicly blame Israel for starvation, deaths in Gaza
👁️🗨️ AP: Privacy and civil rights groups urge US colleges to end campus surveillance to protect protesters
🏥 Time: Trump Condemns Israeli Strike That Hit Gaza Hospital, Killing Journalists and Medics
🇺🇸 The Nation: The Americans Stealing Palestinian Land
🗺️ Haaretz: Telling Israel ‘This Is Not Right’: Democratic U.S. Senators Meet Gaza Hostage Families in Tel Aviv
🖊️ Democracy Now: Fired State Dept. Official Speaks Out, Suggested Condolences for Killed Gaza Journalists
🚓 Jewish Currents: A Federal Security Grant Program Popular with Jewish Organizations May Now Require Beneficiaries to Cooperate with ICE
🗽 Jewish Insider: Israeli Foreign Minister Sa’ar meets with American Jewish leaders in New York
Classic orientalism: assuming Hamas negotiators weren’t smart enough to know what was going on.
““We wanted to speak very toughly to the government of Israel behind closed doors, but ultimately not do anything that we thought would make it harder to get to a deal,” he added.”
These guys are either incredibly stupid or liars. Or, most likely, both.
But it is Israel “sabotaging” the deal.