U.S. presses ahead with modest Mideast plans despite election uncertainty
WASHINGTON — With the U.S. presidential election just a week away, the Biden administration is not giving up hope for short-term deals for cease-fires between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But U.S. officials are mindful that political uncertainty in the United States has made the sides reluctant to commit to any significant agreements before it is clear who has won the White House.
In the meantime, the Middle East is uneasy about what happens next after Israel struck Iranian military targets over the weekend in retaliation for Iran's barrage of ballistic missile attacks on Oct. 1.
U.S. officials said they believe Israel’s attack — whose targets were coordinated with Washington — will not draw an escalatory reaction from Iran. But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share sensitive diplomatic discussions, caution that nothing is certain.
The Biden administration was able to persuade Israel to keep its response limited — gaining assurances it wouldn’t hit nuclear or oil sites in Iran that would have escalated the conflict — despite limited U.S. influence as Biden's term wraps up. As Israel’s closest ally and a key mediator in the Middle East, the U.S. still is pressing for any movement on a truce despite letdowns in the past and little expectation of immediate breakthroughs.
“I don’t sense that the Israelis are feeling a huge amount of urgency,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I feel like they are feeling much less urgency now than a few months ago.”
As conditions, particularly in Gaza, continue to deteriorate, the administration is backing an Egyptian proposal for a two-day Gaza cease-fire that would see Hamas release a limited number of hostages and potentially open more routes for badly needed humanitarian assistance to reach the enclave, the U.S. officials say.
President Joe Biden said Monday that he would join his staff in discussing the proposal.
“We need a cease-fire. We should end this war. It should end. It should end. It should end,” Biden said.
One of the officials said the administration would support virtually any suggestion that leads to a reduction in suffering for Palestinian civilians and the release of hostages but stressed that “we’re not holding our breath.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken ’s visit to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar last week was aimed at gauging the region’s willingness for such a deal. Officials said Blinken came away from his meetings cautiously optimistic but acknowledged that previous similar hopes have been dashed.
“What we really have to determine is whether Hamas is prepared to engage,” Blinken said last week. He said the killing of Hamas military chief Yahya Sinwar helped open a window for new talks on a cease-fire proposal that has been languishing for months.
To underscore U.S. support for a deal, CIA Director William Burns participated in weekend talks in Doha with senior Israeli and Qatari officials on a potential path forward. There was no immediate result, but lower-level talks are expected to continue this week.
The prospects for the success of even such a modest proposal — which would fall well short of previous plans for three-phase cease-fire deal — are uncertain as Hamas, despite heavy losses on the ground, has rejected calls for anything less than a full-on truce and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Hamas has yet to formally respond to the Egyptian plan, though Israel has signaled a willingness to consider the idea.
Longer-term ideas for the post-conflict future of Gaza are a work in progress, according to the U.S. officials, who say that Israel’s battlefield assessments will play a major role in determining what Israel might agree to.
Until now, Israel has adamantly rejected any governance or security role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, something that is a deal-breaker for both the authority and for Arab nations whose support will be critical for any plan to succeed.
While the U.S. election may be a factor, even if there wasn’t the Nov. 5 vote, Israel is showing few signs it is motivated to pursue a cease-fire, said Alterman, the analyst.
“From what I know, it doesn’t feel like we are on a brink of a breakthrough,” Alterman said.
In Lebanon, where Israel has been intensifying military operations against Hezbollah for the past month, U.S. officials allow that a short-term fix is probably unrealistic.
That’s because Lebanon’s fractured political leadership is distrusted by Israeli officials and because the Lebanese Armed Forces have yet to move convincingly to keep Hezbollah fighters from attacking Israel from southern Lebanon.
Biden aide Amos Hochstein — who has been a point man on administration efforts to keep Israel and Hezbollah from entering a full-scale war — is expected in the region this week to get a sense from Israeli officials on what they would be willing to support.
Depending on what he hears, he may then travel to Lebanon to explore what officials there would be willing to do to prevent further Hezbollah rocket strikes on northern and central Israel, officials said.
Complicating matters in both Gaza and Lebanon is that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah have announced replacements after Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Sinwar of Hamas in recent weeks.
