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THE CEASEFIRE DEAL THAT WASN’T
The proposal Biden put forward last week had little basis in reality
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The political panic is on, as it should be, in the Biden camp, and the president’s latest whopper, so far unremarked upon by what passes these days for the major media in America, came at an abruptly scheduled presidential briefing last Friday, a day after the conviction of Donald Trump.
The president, after praising the judicial system as the cornerstone of America, turned to the Middle East and announced: “I want to give an update on my efforts to end the crisis in Gaza. For the past several months, my negotiators . . . have been relentlessly focused not just on a ceasefire that would inevitably be fragile and temporary but on a durable end to the war.
“One that brings all the hostages home, ensures Israeli’s security, creates a better ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and sets the stage for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
“Now, after intensive diplomacy carried out by my team and my many conversations with leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, Israel has offered a comprehensive new proposal. It’s a roadmap to an enduring ceasefire and the release of all hostages.”
The talk sounded great and made a lot of headlines. It was also, as I learned speaking with a well informed American official, pure political bunkum. There was no breakthrough offer of a “comprehensive new proposal” from Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders in Tel Aviv, as they would make clear in subsequent days, had no idea what the president and his increasingly desperate political aides were talking about.
There was a similar unawareness among members of the American team headed by CIA Director William Burns that has been involved for months in ceasefire talks about the Gaza war. One analyst on the team, I was told, raised hell in a cable to Washington because, he wrote, he and his colleagues “were never told about the plan but heard about it from the Qatari government.”
The nonexistent Israeli proposal, as spelled out by Biden, called for three phases:
The first phase, lasting six weeks, would include a total ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza, and the release of “a number of hostages—including women, the elderly, the wounded—in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. . . . Palestinians—civilians—would return to their homes and neighborhoods in all areas of Gaza, including the north.” The president’s statement made no mention of the fact that, after eight months of bombing and tank assaults, there are few homes and neighborhoods to return to.
The second phase called for the release of all remaining living hostages. At that time, the president said: “Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza, and as long as Hamas lives up to its commitments, a temporary ceasefire would become, in the words of the Israeli proposal”—Biden garbled a few words at this point—“‘the cessation of hostilities permanently.’”
“Finally,” Biden said, “in phase three, a major reconstruction plan for Gaza would commence. And any final remains of hostages who have been killed would be returned to their families.
“That’s the offer that’s now on the table and what we’ve been asking for and it’s what we need.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was nowhere to be found in the days immediately after Biden’s unilateral proclamation, was said in the Times to be facing “crunchtime” because of Biden’s announcement of what could be a war ending truce. A touch of caution came when Ophir Falk, Netanyahu’s chief foreign policy adviser, told the Times of London that Israel was not rejecting a ceasefire deal but ominously added: “there will not be a ceasefire until all our objectives have been met.”
At the time, the Israeli military, at Netanyahu’s command, was continuing to bomb, starve, and maim Gaza and its people while conducting a deadly search in its tunnels for the leadership of Hamas. John Kirby, who has emerged as the White House’s major foreign policy spokesman, was asked Sunday about the initial noncommittal response from Falk. His response had little of the president’s earlier certitude. “It’s an Israeli proposal,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “one that they arrived at with intense diplomacy with their own national security team and over at the State Department.”
The American official I spoke to depicted Biden’s Friday afternoon “peace is at hand” speech as a panicked White House effort to gain some political traction at a time when Biden has been unable to take a firm moral stand in opposition to the Israeli massacre of civilians in Gaza: “But wait,” he said, “if this were the Israeli proposal and Hamas accepted it, then the war is over. The IDF goes home as do the Gaza residents. The hostages come home, and the Israeli taxpayers rebuild Gaza as compensation for their aggression.
“Why come up with this fairy tale?” the official asked. ”Nobody believes in fairy tales except the Irish. But let’s pretend that Netanyahu made the proposal, and Biden said yes, and we support it. The Israeli public would kick Bibi’s ass out of office. They support this war.”
It is not known what Biden will say or do next, in his frantic scramble to stay in office, but the Democrats have a problem that can’t be fixed by looking the other way. Lying about a peace proposal that does not exist is just the beginning.