President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris have seized upon the decimations of Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ leadership and military capacity culminating in the assassinations of their respective leaders Nasrallah and Sinwar as providing Israel with the elusive magic bullets with which to end the two terror organizations’ continuous attacks on Israel.
They are preaching to Israel that now, because of a period of ostensibly maximum vulnerability for both and the elimination of two major, hard line obstacles to peace, is the time for Israel to toss Hamas and Hezbollah lifelines and conclude long term ceasefire agreements with each.
Unfortunately, however, within the last few days it has become increasingly apparent that, for all their calamitous losses, all Hamas and Hezbollah are interested in are agreements that would allow them to survive with their capacity to afflict Israel as intact as possible. But there is a more fundamental problem with the palpable U.S. naivete.
Nowhere is there an acknowledgement by the Biden team that what is driving the Hamas-Hezbollah problem is an Iran that is bent on Israel’s destruction and which uses both terror organizations as local surrogates. Thus, as a practical matter, it is a non-starter to urge Israel to make this or that deal with entities that at the end of the day are not calling the shots.
And it seems that Israel is not buying into the Alice-in-Wonderland approach. The New York Times reported on Sunday on leaked, highly classified U.S. intelligence documents describing recent satellite images of Israeli military preparations for a potential strike on Iran.
To be sure, the preparations may be related to the widely anticipated Israeli retaliatory strike against Iran for an Iranian rocket and missile assault on Israel earlier this month. Yet the disclosures are said to reveal preparations beyond what would be required for a proportionate strike by Israel and, also reportedly, the U.S. is concerned about the scope of Israeli plans..
Now is the time for the Biden Administration to make clear that there is no daylight between the U.S. and Israel. It is only when Iran and company anticipate that come what may, America has Israel’s back, will they restrain their murderous impulses.
