TheAltWorld Blinken’s truce talks ruse
What’s behind the latest US Gaza/Lebanon cease-fire proposals?
The Arab world is witnessing a two-pronged diplomatic offensive by the United States.
It is trying, first of all, to reach a cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip as quickly as possible, after turning up the bloody genocidal pressure on Jabalya, Beit Lahiya and Deir al-Balah to twist the Hamas leadership’s arm.
In addition, it is applying the scorched-earth theory to parts of Lebanon — the South, Beirut’s Dahiya, and the Bekaa Valley — supportive of Hezbollah to force it to accept the so-called cease-fire proposal whose details were devised by Amos Hochstein, the notoriously pro-Israeli US presidential envoy to Lebanon.
The intensification of these American moves one week before the US holds presidential and mid-term legislative elections is intended to achieve two objectives:
First, to improve the chances of the incumbent Democratic Party and its increasingly unpopular candidate Kamala Harris of gaining the votes of Arab- or Muslim-origin voters, which could be crucial in swing states given the closeness of the race between Harris and her rival Donal Trump.
Second, to rescue Israel from its state of military, economic and psychological collapse amid rising casualties in the ranks of its military, especially on the Lebanese front, and the resistance’s missiles reaching Haifa, Tel Aviv, Safad, Tabariya, and even Benjamin Netanyahu’s bedroom for the first time since this entity was created 76 years ago.
The resumption of Gaza truce talks in Doha between the intelligence chiefs of the four parties — the US, Israel, Egypt, and Qatar — is the top priority, because the strikes launched by Resistance Axis members from Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq cannot be halted so long as the genocidal war on Gaza continues. All of these groups and their leaders are committed to the course charted by the martyred Hassan Nasrallah, which he reiterated firmly and clearly in his last speech just days fore he was killed. His insistence on continuing to support the resistance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and rejection of all pressure to disengage most likely brought forward his assassination.
I feel dutybound to alert Hamas’ leaders both inside and outside occupied Palestine to the dangers of this US ploy led by Antony Blinken to break the unity of fronts and rip its cohesion so as to single out the Gaza Strip and complete the Zionist plan to destroy it, eradicate all resistance, and end Hamas’ rule. I have no doubt these leaders are fully cognisant of its underlying goals.
Even a two-day truce in Gaza, as proposed in Egyptian President Abdelfattah as-Sisi’s surprising and shocking ‘initiative’, would mean green-lighting a quick cease-fire in Lebanon and ending the highly successful war of attrition waged by Hezbollah, which has doubled the flight of settlers from northern occupied Palestine, damaged the occupation army’s capabilities, and increased Jewish reverse-migration.
A further objective may be to end the Yemeni strikes that have wrecked Israeli maritime trade and threaten the US and British naval presence in the Red Sea and adjacent waters. Halting these attacks has been conditioned on a cease-fire in Gaza.
I identify fully with our people in the Gaza Strip who are suffering hundreds of deaths and injuries daily and are subjected to a war of extermination and starvation. But victory is the product of patience. Their steadfastness and that of the resistance in the face of this war have foiled all plans to uproot them and loot their gas, land, and shores. The al-Aqsa Flood was a marvel of resistance in modern Arab history. It shattered the myth of Israeli invincibility, took the battle to the heart of the occupier state, stripped its army of its stature, restored Arab worth and pride after it was disfigured by official capitulation, normalisation and collusion agreements, and brought closer the demise of the Zionist enterprise.
While sponsoring talks in Doha, Cairo, and Lebanon, the US does not want any cease-fire unless it serves, salvages, and strengthens that enterprise. This explains why negotiations on a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip continued for 12 months without making progress, despite heavy pressure on and threats to the Palestinian negotiators who stuck firmly to their terms. They were and are fully aware of Israel’s tricks and duplicity and the US’ unconditional support for it.
Yahya al-Sinwar was right to reject all these ruses supported by the US and some Arab states and hold fast to his demands for a full withdrawal, permanent cease-fire, reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, and ending the occupation. His successors must preserve his legacy.
Sinwar was not the obstacle to an agreement whose killing somehow prompted American and Arab brokers to renew efforts to reach one. They were the obstacle themselves, because they adopted Israel’s conditions, supported its war of annihilation and starvation that killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and injured 15,000 over the course of 12 months, and kept silent as 95% of the Strip’s homes and buildings were destroyed.
Continuing along Hassan Nasrallah’s path in Lebanon, ad preserving Yahya Sinwar’s legacy in Gaza and the West Bank, is the surest and most honourable course to salvation, and to defeating the wars of annihilation Israel wages with US support and the complicity of most Arab regimes.
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