- Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a series of devastating attacks on Hezbollah.
- He has rejected or ignored a series of attempts by the US to head off a wider conflict.
- Biden has been criticized for trying to stop a wider war while still sending arms to Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rapidly escalating Israel’s campaign against its regional foes, and trampling on US diplomatic efforts in the process.
In the latest sign he is ignoring US warnings, The Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli special operations forces were carrying out raids into southern Lebanon ahead of a possible ground incursion this week.
The raids were aimed at gathering intelligence and discovering Hezbollah’s weakness, the Journal said.
Amir Avivi, a former senior Israeli military official, told the publication that a ground invasion is imminent, a major escalation that Israeli officials have been threatening for months.
“The IDF has made a lot of preparations for a ground incursion,” Avivi said. “Overall, this always includes special operations. This is part of the process.”
The raids follow an unprecedented series of strikes from Israel. In the early hours of Monday, Israel struck central Beirut for the first time since 2006. It also confirmed it had killed Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, a Hamas leader, in Lebanon.
It came after the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in a massive explosion in a suburb of Beirut on Friday, dramatically raising the stakes of Israel’s yearlong war against Iran-backed militias in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks.
Israel’s stepped-up campaign against Hezbollah could be preparations for a ground invasion of Lebanon, and it risks triggering another direct confrontation with Iran.
US attempts to deter a wider war
US President Joe Biden has long been seeking to prevent Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza from spiraling into a bigger war, potentially dragging in the US and regional powers.
However, some critics have claimed his approach has failed because the US-supplied arms have allowed Netanyahu’s embattled government to continue escalating and widening the war.
“Without US support, this war would not have been possible,” Gilbert Achcar, Professor of International Relations at SOAS University of London told France 24. “It’s actually the joint US-Israeli war.”
“It’s not so much the Israelis who are treating him as an irrelevance”, Jazmine El-Galal, former Pentagon advisor during the Obama administration, told the Independent.
“It’s that Biden is not actually trying seriously to effect any change. He’s been complaining about Netanyahu for almost a year now,” she said, “but in the meantime, the US continues to send arms and funds to Israel.”
The US last week appeared to have been on the brink of negotiating a cross-border ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah — but just 24 hours later Israel assassinated Nasrallah.
It was a strike that, according to The Journal, shocked US officials. The publication, citing unnamed US officials, said Israel did not tip off its most important ally about the strike before it was carried out.
The White House described the killing as “a measure of justice for his many victims,” though again urged against further escalation. Hezbollah was involved in the 1983 bombings of the US Embassy in Beirut and the US Marine Corps barracks.
– Getty Images
“We are shocked,” one US official told CNN after Netanyahu rejected the ceasefire proposal before Israel launched the all-out attacks.
It’s the latest in a series of incidents in which the Israeli leader has ignored or rejected President Joe Biden’s attempts to restrain Israeli military action in Gaza and, more recently, Lebanon.
Netanyahu believes he is ‘winning the war’
A former British military chief said that may be because Netanyahu believes that he is winning the war in the Middle East.
General Lord Richard Dannatt told Sky News on Sunday that Netanyahu believes he can “press on” with the conflict.
“A ground invasion of Lebanon is increasingly threatened,” he told the outlet.
He said the US has been urging Israel to pull back but hasn’t been doing enough to “effectively” stop Netanyahu.
“It is still supplying weapons and a lot of the stuff that Israel needs,” Dannatt said.
“On the one hand. the US is calling for restraint, but on the other. they are not effectively stopping Netanyahu, and he believes that he is winning this war.”
Ignoring red lines
The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas on October 7, 2023, the US has put in place legislation providing at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel.
Overall, since 2009, it has provided Israel with $3.4 billion in funding for missile defense, including $1.3 billion in the development of Israel’s Iron Dome system, according to figures from the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
It’s a big trading partner outside of arms, too. US exports to Israel last year amounted to just over $14 billion, per figures from the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade.
Despite this, Netanyahu has ignored a series of red lines from Biden over how Israel conducts its campaign and rejected US pressure to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas.
Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, in an article for Foreign Policy in September, argued that Biden’s reluctance to hold Israel to account was undermining the rules-based international order the president claims to champion.
Some are claiming that as his term in office coming to an end, Biden is giving up. The White House has pushed back against these claims.
“No, he absolutely hasn’t given up,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN about reaching a deal to end the war in Gaza last week.
After the devastating blows Israel has dealt to its enemies in recent days, exposing the limits of their power and the reach of Israeli intelligence and weapons, Netanyahu likely believes that the impetus is with him.
But a widening conflict would likely not come to a conclusion quickly, US officials are warning.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in the wake of last week’s collapsed US peace effort that if Israel rejects diplomacy, it will result in “greater instability and insecurity, the ripples of which will be felt around the world.”
“The choices that all parties make in coming days will determine which path this region is on with profound consequences for its people now and possibly for years to come,” Blinken said.
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