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In The Middle East The U.S. Has Reached The End Of Its Abilities
The Biden administration is trying everything to better the situation for the Israeli government except by withdrawing its financial and munition support which are the only two measures that could bring Israel to its senses.
There are now several small wars in the Middle East which may soon accumulate into a big one. Israel is fighting Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza. It is fighting a silent resistance in the West Bank. On its norther borders it is involved in daily clashes with Hizbullah and various Palestinian resistance groups.
Israel is also bombing Syria and killing Iranian envoys to that country. Iraqi and Syrian resistance groups are attacking U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. is bombing these groups for more or less therapeutic purposes while trying to not hurt them too much. In the Red Sea the Ansarullah government of Yemen is blocking sea traffic related to Israel, the U.S. and UK. The U.S. and UK are bombing Ansarullah positions even as they know that no amount of bombing will change its position.
People in other Arab countries, while seemingly calm, are enraged over Israel's genocidal behavior in Gaza. Their leaders try to keep their distances from the wars but at some point may well be forced to take sides in it.
Meanwhile the U.S., the alleged superpower, is hapless and helplessly trying to achieve results that are way beyond its abilities.
See for one example the last attempt by a U.S. envoy to prevent a further escalation with Lebanon:
US presents new blueprint to push Hezbollah away from Israeli border – Ynetnews, Feb 4 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden's Middle East envoy Amos Hochstein outlined the key elements of a political settlement to deescalate tensions between Israel and Hezbollah during his visit to the Jewish state on Sunday.
The plan consists of two phases: In the first, Hezbollah would cease hostilities actions along the border with Israel and will retreat between eight to ten kilometers north from the border.
Israeli residents will return to their homes, and a significant deployment of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL peacekeeping forces will maintain stability in southern Lebanon and along the border.
In the second phase, Israel and Lebanon will begin negotiations to demarcate the land border, including discussions on 13 points on disputes along their shared boundaries. Simultaneously, the U.S. and the international community will explore offering "economic incentives" to Lebanon.
Hochstein received the green light from the Lebanese government for his proposal, though it remains unclear whether Hezbollah agrees with the arrangement.
The envoy, who recently met with President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz urged Israel to give his plan a chance.
Nice plan. But what can you do to implement it?
How in hell will the U.S. be able to make Hezbollah to cease hostilities actions along the border with Israel and to retreat between eight to ten kilometers from the border?
Hizbullah fighters at the border are living in the border towns. They were born there. They want to die there. How the f*** does the U.S. think they can be pushed out? And why would Hizbullah agree to a ceasefire when the murdering of Palestinians in Gaza continues to be the major project of Israel?
The U.S. has no means, none, to press Hizbullah into a ceasefire or to push it to retreat from the border line.
The Lebanese government supports that move? Sure, verbally, as long as you cough up some money. But Hizbullah is part of that government. It is also the superior military power in Lebanon. Neither the Lebanese army nor the U.N. forces have the ability to fight it.
Step one is thereby meaningless. Step two, a promise for negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, makes likewise no sense as Israel is notoriously unwilling to make any concessions.
If baseless fantasies like the above are all the U.S. can come up with it is truly at the end of its abilities.
A chance of a war between Israel and Hizbullah in Lebanon is increasing daily. While there are already daily clashes these are limited by certain red lines and targets. Both sides still avoid to cross those.
But Israel's government needs a victory. Its war aims in Gaza are clearly not achievable. Losses are mounting. Its population, especially the settlers from the north who had to flee their homes, are unruly.
Alastair Crooke thinks (vid) that Israel will start a full out war with Hizbullah simply because the Israeli government needs a victory. He thinks that Netanyahoo still thinks he can achieve one. Others though have their doubts. Hizbullah today is far better equipped and trained than it had been during the 2006 war with Israel. That war ended in a draw or, as some see it, with a defeat of Israel. I know of no expert in that area who thinks that Israel today would fare any better than that.
I'd say let them try. The may well learn from it.
But why the Biden administration even thinks that it can stop such a clash by presenting plans it has no means to press for is beyond me.
Lev Davidovich | Feb 5 2024 16:30 utc | 16
The Archivist | Feb 5 2024 16:35 utc | 18
Rain | Feb 5 2024 16:50 utc | 20
james | Feb 5 2024 17:03 utc | 22
JessDTruth | Feb 5 2024 17:27 utc | 29
Jane | Feb 5 2024 17:46 utc | 33
Scotch Bingeington | Feb 5 2024 18:16 utc | 42
Mark A | Feb 5 2024 19:01 utc | 55
Turk 152 | Feb 5 2024 19:37 utc | 63
Surely it is time we called a spade a spade?
The United Zionist Jewish States of America
U.S. President Joe Biden’s Middle East envoy Zionist Orthodox Jew and Israeli Born Citizen Amos Hochstein (his Orthodox Jewish US parents had emigrated to Israel)
Of course we have a reasonable handle on how this all works, unfortunately the rest of the world and the US hoi polloi do not and continue to live in denial – despite PNAC and the GW Bush Regime, despite Zionist Jews across the US deep state apparatus – and despite all that is known of the Jewish Lobby and anti-BDS laws passed across the USA states.
FYI REFS
Hochstein was born in Israel, the child of American Jewish immigrants. He began working as a foreign policy adviser to Democratic Party members of the U.S. government House Foreign Affairs Committee from 1994 to January 2001.[13][14][15] He identifies as a Modern Orthodox Jew.[16] He is married to Julie Rae Ringel; they have four children together[17] and live in Washington D.C. His wife works for the Georgetown University Continuing Education School in the executive leadership coaching program.
there is more there ….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Hochstein
What’s Israeli to me? Amos Hochstein. To the Interior Ministry, he’s also Israeli. A Jerusalemite. If you ask the IDF, you’ll find he’s simply a tank crewman, no more and no less. But here’s the thing. After the army, Hochstein settled in the United States, and in recent years he returned to the Middle East wearing an American hat. So American, in fact, that he became “impartial.” So much so that these days he’s serving as the American broker between Israel and Lebanon on the gas agreement. Suddenly an Israeli gets up in the morning and feels he’s an American broker.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2022-10-21/ty-article-opinion/.premium/americas-dishonest-brokers/00000183-f6b9-dd9c-af97-feff4ef50000
Israel-born US envoy to travel to Beirut to negotiate demarcation line
Hochstein, a US official with Israeli citizenship, is expected to work out a deal in Tel Aviv’s favor
On 8 February, US Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein will make another visit to Beirut to propose a definition for an underwater demarcation line for Lebanon and Israel.
Hochstein, an Israeli citizen and former IDF soldier from 1992 to 1995, was a lobbyist for Cassidy and Associates and vice president for Houston-based LNG energy and gas company Tellurian, Inc.
Several Lebanese laws prohibit the country’s citizens from meeting with Israeli nationals. It is unclear how and why Hochstein’s visit and meetings with Lebanese officials are exempt from these civil and military law bans.
https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-born-us-envoy-to-travel-to-beirut-to-negotiate-demarcation-line
James Carden @Antiwarcom
on US envoy to Israel Amos Hochstein: “The practice of appointing foreign nationals in sensitive positions of public trust are wildly inappropriate and lead, inevitably, to a subversion of US national interests.”
https://twitter.com/KelleyBVlahos/status/1727391940734492774
Tel Aviv’s Man in Washington
by James Carden Posted on November 22, 2023
In a city awash in foreign interests, dual citizens, and intersecting and at times conflicting loyalties, sometimes the most egregious examples are hiding in plain sight.
While largely complicit in the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that dictates, among many other things, that we never ever mention that the Long Island-raised editor of the once venerable Atlantic magazine (and now host of Washington Week on PBS) served as an Israeli prison guard who, according to his own account, beat Palestinian prisoners under his watch, every few years legacy media awakens from its slumber and actually does its job.
The last such instance was probably in 2014 when the New York Times published a lengthy expose of the ties between DC think tanks like the Atlantic Council, CSIS, the Brookings Institution and foreign interests.
[…]
This week, it was reported that President Joe Biden, lacking an even minimally competent Secretary of State, has sent White House senior adviser Amos Hochstein for consultations with senior Israeli officials in the hope of heading off a war between Israel and Lebanon.
The choice of Hochstein for such a delicate diplomatic task ought to have raised eyebrows in Washington, not least because of the unusual background of Mr. Biden’s personal envoy.
Born and raised in Jerusalem, Amos J. Hochstein is an Israeli-US national who served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the early 1990s. After service in the IDF, he appears to have been employed briefly at a Tel Aviv PR agency before moving to Washington and commencing his ascent to the highest reaches of the US government, beginning with a staff position for Congressman Sam Gejdenson and then as Staff Director of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. According to the Lebanese news platform L’Orient, as a congressional staffer in the 1990s, Hochstein “met with an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official to discuss a plan to resettle Palestinians in Iraq in return for sanctions relief.” This background, little noted in the American press, is more than a bit germane to Hochstein’s current policy portfolio.
https://original.antiwar.com/james-carden/2023/11/21/tel-avivs-man-in-washington/
Amos Hochstein: The Israel-born diplomat mediating Lebanon-Israel maritime border negotiations
L’Orient Today / By Richard SALAME, 05 November 2021
BEIRUT — Amos Hochstein is back on the Lebanese political scene as US mediator for Lebanon-Israel maritime border negotiations, which have been stalled since an initial round of indirect talks were held in Naqoura from last year until May 2021. But while Hochstein’s appointment to the role has raised eyebrows — he was born and raised in Israel to American parents and served in the Israeli Army, according to Israeli media — the choice of an Israel-born diplomat to mediate between the two countries that are technically at war, especially one who is a veteran of the military of one of those countries, has not appeared to derail negotiations.
On Oct. 20–21 Hochstein held a series of meetings with Lebanon’s top three political leaders as well as its top general, the energy and foreign ministers, and the military officer in charge of the most recent round of talks last fall.
Earlier this month Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told local Lebanese media that the state deals with Hochstein as “an American envoy responsible to his administration, and not in his Israeli capacity.” Under normal circumstances it is illegal for an Israeli, or a non-Israeli who has been to Israel, to enter Lebanon, or for Lebanese citizens to have contact with Israelis.
https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1280583/amos-hochstein-the-israeli-born-diplomat-mediating-lebanon-israel-maritime-border-negotiations.html
Project for the New American Century – US ZIONIST JEWISH NEOCONS INCORPORATED
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
THE ISRAEL LOBBY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy
Abstract
In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the “Israel Lobby.” This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/israel-lobby-and-us-foreign-policy
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy: John J. Mearsheimer
2015 The University of Chicago
A panel featuring John J Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTksWA1I2UI
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Feb 6 2024 3:10 utc | 189
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