Jenny Leonard and Kateryna Kadabashy | (TNS) Bloomberg News
U.S. President Joe Biden told Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a cease-fire with Hamas as the White House’s frustrations over the continuation of the war in Gaza grow.
The two leaders, whose relationship has been strained by the conflict, spoke Thursday. While Biden pledged to support Israel against renewed threats from Iran and allied militias such as Hezbollah, he said he was “very direct” with Netanyahu, with the regional fallout from the war, now almost 10 months’ old, worsening.
“We have the basis for a cease-fire,” Biden told reporters. “He should move on it and they should move on it now.”
He said the assassination in Iran this week of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas and a key negotiator for the group, had “not helped.”
Iran and Hamas blamed Israel for the killing. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied it was responsible. Privately, its officials have not pushed back against the claim.
Biden is trying to use his last months in office to end the war, which has caused huge political divisions in the U.S. He’s struggled to influence Netanyahu’s war strategy, despite his administration providing billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.
The prime minister, who heads the most nationalist government in Israel’s history, says the country needs to continue until Hamas is destroyed as a military and political organization. While Hamas has been hammered since the war started in October, with Israel saying it’s killed roughly half its fighters, the group is managing to regroup in some areas. Israel’s national security minister has said Hamas probably won’t be fully defeated before the end of the year.
Netanyahu also denies the frequent claims from U.S., American and Arab officials that Israel is not doing enough to get aid to civilians in Gaza, much of which has been reduced to rubble.
The truce negotiations, mediated by Qatar, the U.S. and Egypt, have dragged for months. The two sides are working on a plan Biden outlined in May, which would see fighting initially stop for six weeks, with some hostages released as well as Palestinians in Israeli jails. The second and third stages would lead to more captives being freed and potentially a permanent end to the war.
There are still obstacles to overcome. One of the main problems is that Israel won’t agree to any truce it thinks will restrict its ability to restart the war and destroy Hamas if the group doesn’t surrender.
More tumult
Haniyeh’s death added to the tumult in the Middle East. It followed just hours after Israel targeted and killed a senior Hezbollah commander called Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. Israel confirmed that hit, saying Shukr was responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights last weekend that killed 12 children and teenagers playing football.
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Iran and Hezbollah have vowed revenge against Israel, with Tehran ordering its security forces to assess options for attacking the Jewish state.
Iran and Israel exchanged fire in April when Tehran accused its arch enemy of striking a consulate building in Syria. Iran retaliated by launching 300 drones and missiles at Israel. Yet it effectively telegraphed its move in advance, helping Israel intercept almost all the projectiles with the help of allied armies and ensuring they caused little damage. Israel, under pressure from the U.S. and Europe not to respond aggressively, launched a limited strike on an Iranian airbase.
This time, Iran’s revenge may be more fierce, given the sheer embarrassment of having a foreign dignitary assassinated in the heart of its capital. Its options range from another direct assault on Israel to getting its proxies to step up attacks on the country to hitting Israeli targets across the world.
The rising tensions in the petroleum-rich region have impacted global markets. Oil prices are up since Wednesday morning and Israel’s shekel is heading for its worst week in more than four years.
‘Heavy price’
Netanyahu said earlier Thursday that Israel’s at “a very high level of preparedness for any scenario.”
“We will exact a very high price for any act of aggression against us from any quarter whatsoever,” he said.
Biden was joined on his call to Netanyahu by Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for the presidential election in November.
The president promised “new defensive U.S. military deployments” for Israel, which the White House’s statement didn’t elaborate on.
He also “stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region.”
The U.S. government has used intermediaries to send warnings to Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen not to escalate matters further, according to people familiar with American policy.
The war in Gaza erupted when Hamas fighters swarmed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage. Israel’s subsequent offensive on Gaza has killed around 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there.
Hamas and Hezbollah are part of what’s often called Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance,’ a group of anti-Israel and anti-U.S. militias in the Middle East. The U.S. designates both of them as terrorist organizations.
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