Gaza cease-fire floated as Mideast flash points multiply
What happened
Negotiations toward a temporary ceasefire resumed between Israel and Hamas this week, even as conflicts involving Iranian proxies in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere threatened to mushroom into a regionwide war. Through U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari intermediaries, both sides expressed openness to a gradual exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners in a monthlong break in the conflict. Hamas, though, said it would refuse any deal that lacked a road map for a long-term cease-fire. In the Gaza Strip, Israel experienced its single deadliest day in the conflict this week, with 24 Israeli soldiers killed. Most of them died when Hamas militants fired at an Israeli unit attempting to demolish a neighborhood near the border. The soldiers were seeking to clear land as part of Israel’s new plan to create a half-mile-wide, depopulated “buffer zone” on the Gaza side of the border. The U.S. said it is opposed to the idea. “We do not want to see the territory of Gaza reduced in any way,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
In the wider Middle East, U.S. forces hit multiple targets. Airstrikes launched from the USS Eisenhower carrier group struck three facilities in western Iraq linked to Iranian-backed militants. Those militants, the Pentagon said, were responsible for attacks last week on a U.S. base in Iraq that left four U.S. personnel with traumatic brain injuries. More than 150 such militant attacks have wounded nearly 70 Americans stationed in Iraq and Syria since the Gaza conflict began on Oct. 7. The U.S. and U.K. also continued bombing bases in Yemen used by the Houthis, the Shiite rebels who have been attacking international shipping in the Red Sea, hitting eight more sites there.
What the editorials said
As the Gaza war enters its fourth month, the U.S. and Israel are “openly at odds” over the endgame, said The Washington Post. In a call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, President Biden pressed for a disarmed Palestinian state, but just days later, Netanyahu “emphatically ruled it out.” Netanyahu is “wrong about the issue”—peace is inconceivable so long as Palestinians lack any hope for self-determination—but Israelis agree with him. Some 65 percent now oppose a Palestinian state.
Of course they do, said the New York Post. A Palestinian state at this juncture would serve only as “a launching pad for more attacks.” Hamas doesn’t want a “two-state solution” any more than Israel does—one of its top leaders, Khaled Mashal, “just vowed that the terror group will never accept any deal that leaves Israel intact.” Mashal said the Oct. 7 massacre gave Hamas hope it could destroy Israel outright. That’s why “the first, necessary step to peace” is to eradicate Hamas.
What the columnists said
The Gaza war lit the spark, and the now the entire “Middle East is blowing up,” said Fred Kaplan in Slate. Iran and its proxies have launched a rash of “spin-off battles.” Hezbollah, which has 150,000 rockets and missiles stationed near the Lebanon-Israel border, has been lobbing them at Israel, while other Iran-backed militias are attacking U.S. forces from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Perhaps most alarmingly, Iran itself launched attacks on sites in Iraq and Pakistan.
You can trace the blame to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which lifted sanctions on Tehran, said Seth Mandel in Commentary. Both the Obama and Biden administrations have coddled Iran and its proxies—Biden even struck the Houthis off the terrorist list before belatedly relisting them. Now Iran is undermining U.S. interests everywhere, and our military is forced to intervene on more and more fronts. “When you knowingly let a problem fester, it doesn’t solve itself.”
As Iranian proxies injure U.S. forces, Biden faces “growing pressure to take stronger action against Iran itself,” said The Economist. So far, the two sides are in a “perilous balancing act,” with Iran helping its allies stage attacks to weaken Israel while the U.S. counters with “limited retaliation.” Yet the longer that goes on, the greater the risk that one of the attacks will cause a major war. “Biden’s best hope” is for Israel to wind down its war in Gaza soon, “to reduce the fury across the region.” Israel, though, “shows little sign of being ready to stop.”