IDF Expands Gaza Operations As Blinken Arrives For 9th Visit To Israel

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has landed in Israel on Sunday for his ninth visit since Oct.7 as part of an ongoing effort to achieve ceasefire in Gaza, and to gain the release of the hostages.

He’s expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at 11 a.m. tomorrow (local time), alongside which there will be meetings with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Foreign Minister Israel Katz and President Isaac Herzog.

The Biden administration has constantly claimed to be “at the goal line” of achieving a truce deal, a refrain heard for months, but with still nothing official to show.

Both warring sides have blamed the other. Hamas has long insisted on a full Israeli military withdrawal as a condition for releasing the hostages.

But Netanyahu has countered that he will not order troops out of Gaza until Hamas as an organization is destroyed and fully eradicated. Some of his own generals, however, have argued that this will be impossible and an protracted, or even endless insurgency will result.

The latest words of Netanyahu reveal he won’t budge despite international and US pressure: 

Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel is sticking to its demands in ongoing hostage talks, positions that he says are in line with the proposal laid out by the White House in May.

“We are conducting very complex negotiations,” he says, “while on the other side stands a murderous, uninhibited, and obstinate terrorist organization.”

“But I want to emphasize,” the premier continues, “we are conducting negotiations [“give-and-take” in Hebrew], and not give-and-give. There are areas where we can show flexibility, and there are area where we can’t show flexibility — and we are standing firm on them. We know quite well how to distinguish between the two.”

For whatever ‘optimism’ comes out of Doha, and for whatever ‘carrots’ the US hopes to use to entice both sides to at least agree to a pause in fighting, Blinken’s ninth trip appears yet another diplomatic exercise in futility.

The US still hasn’t hesitated to approve gargantuan defense packages for Israel of late. So in the end Tel Aviv clearly has little to fear from White House ‘pressure’. 

“I’m bored, so I shoot.” Israeli soldiers describe near-total absence of firing regulations in Gaza, with troops shooting as they please, setting homes ablaze & leaving corpses on the streets – all with their commanders’ permission | @972mag investigation https://t.co/TrECJp1dtJ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 18, 2024

At the same time US progressives and also conservative anti-war activists have long pointed out that the White House’s condemnation of the unfolding humanitarian disaster, which US-supplied bombs are having an outsized role in, is all for show and mere public relations damage control.

And likely that’s what Blinken’s latest trip to the region is all about. There will be much high-ideal rhetoric and little substance. And the war and escalation will continue. Meanwhile a Times of Israel Sunday top headline reads: IDF expanding operations in southern, central Gaza… even as Blinken is in country.