Israel and US Military Operations in the Middle East Going Wobbly Under Multi-Front Pressure
Israel, clearly naively, assumed it could push the Gazans into Egypt. When Egypt resisted fiercely, the next Israel move was to increase the punishment of the Gaza population, based at best the idea that it would increase pressure on Arab states to relent and accept Palestinians, and at worse, regarding extermination as a perfectly acceptable way to get rid of the Gazans. So a plan for ethnic cleansing on a massive scale has become genocide. In case you harbor any doubts about the real war aims:
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So a nefarious thought: Norman Finkelstein, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, and no doubt others, have assumed that the US would join Israel in providing as much pressure as could be mustered on the International Court of Justice judges, and their home countries, to secure a ruling against “provisional measures” to stop what sure looks like genocide. But what if the US has come to realize that both it and Israel are hopelessly overextended, and the best way to limit the fallout is to get Israel that it is risking losing even the US, and not just over time? What if the US has only been going through the motions, recognizing that the press coverage of a South Africa win on some provision measures (South Africa is extremely unlikely to get the court to call for Israel to stop military operations unilaterally) might be loud enough to finally penetrate Israel’s self-delusion and force it to start figuring out how to back out of its Gaza/West Bank overreach?
Now as we all know in reality, no one in the Biden Administration has the sense or even the self preservation instincts that it needs to create some daylight between the US and Israel. In keeping, the only idea for a way out from both the US and UN isabsolute non-starter of a two-state solution (please see our recent post for details). If someone had a more realistic de-escalatory path, perhaps the horrible hostilities could go from a full boil to a simmer. But as a friend saids, if you want a happy ending, watch a Disney movie.
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