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‘This Is A Setback’: Did Biden’s Gaza Ceasefire Dreams Get Blown Up With A Top Hamas Leader?

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By JAKE SMITH

 

The Biden administration’s Gaza ceasefire hopes may be fading in the wake of a top Hamas leader being assassinated deep inside Iran, defense experts told the Daily Caller News Foundations.

The administration and several international negotiators have spent months trying to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages in Gaza, with officials suggesting in recent weeks that remaining “gaps” could be soon narrowed to reach an agreement. But the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, a key negotiator in the deal, will likely complicate ceasefire talks and erase months of progress, experts told the DCNF.

Israel has not taken credit for the killing, but Iran and Hamas were quick to assign blame regardless, and some reports indicate that the Israeli forces were secretly behind the operation. His assassination underscores the unique position Israel has found itself in over the last several months — working tirelessly to defeat the terrorist group while trying to negotiate with them at the same time, experts told the DCNF.

“The implication here is that the ceasefire talks and hostage talks are set back a while, to the extent that anyone believed that they were going to happen at all,” Gabriel Noronha, executive director at Polaris National Security and former State Department official, told the DCNF. “From Hamas’ side, internally, they’re not going to feel like doing anything with Israel anytime soon.”

“Talking while fighting is hard under the best of circumstances… it’s a weird thing to do at all, although you have to do it. [The U.S. has] done it, of course, but when you kill the actual negotiator, it’s going to be very hard to find somebody who wants to play that role in the future, because you are now both a diplomat and a target,” Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, told the DCNF. “It would be remarkable to me if anybody told you they didn’t think this was a setback for diplomacy.”

Haniyeh joined Hamas in 1997 and led the terrorist group’s political wing since 2017, according to The Washington Post. He was sanctioned by the U.S. and wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In the ongoing war in Gaza, Haniyeh represented Hamas during ceasefire negotiators with Qatari and Egyptian meditators. Though his death is not unwelcomed by the West, it threatens to complicate ongoing negotiations with Hamas.

Biden officials are now scrambling to keep the deal alive, according to several reports. The strike against Haniyeh in Iran caught the Biden administration by surprise, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal.

“This is something we were not aware of or involved in,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interviewduring a trip to Singapore , adding that he did not know “what this [meant]” for ongoing ceasefire discussions. The State Department referred the DCNF to deputy spokesman Vedant Patel’s comments during a press briefing on Wednesday, in which he echoed Blinken’s comments that he didn’t want “to speculate on any potential impacts.”

President Joe Biden held a “tough” phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to express his frustration that Israel would choose to kill Haniyeh at such a pivotal time for the ceasefire talks, even though his death as a general matter would not be upsetting to the U.S., two U.S. officials told Axios. The phone call was reportedly emotional as Biden “raised his voice” at Netanyahu toward the conclusion of the discussion, insisting that he wanted a ceasefire deal reached within “a week to two weeks,” an Israeli official with direct knowledge of the discussions told Axios.

The Biden administration and the Israeli government have seemingly been at odds for months on how to achieve a ceasefire. Biden put forward a ceasefire proposal in May that he claimed was penned by the Israelis, but Netanyahu seemed to reject the proposal shortly after it was announced.

“I think it’s clear that they have not been synced up on the ceasefire approach at all,” Logan told the DCNF. “Part of it is wishful thinking on the part of the Biden people that, you know, ‘we believe Netanyahu should want this, therefore he probably does want it’ — and they’re not listening to what Netanyahu is saying in reality. I think there has to be some frustration there and a feeling that the world’s only superpower has little leverage to control this situation.”

Biden also spoke with Netanyahu about Iran and Hezbollah’s potential retaliation, given that both have promised revenge for the strikes in Lebanon and Iran on Tuesday. Israeli forces claimed responsibility for an airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday which successfully killed a high-level Hezbollah commander, just hours before the separate strike in Iran.

The two world leaders discussed joint U.S.-Israeli military operations that would stage a defense in the event of an attack, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin informed his Israeli counterparts on Thursday about U.S. force posture changes in the Middle East, according to Reuters and Axios.

Biden told Netanyahu during their Thursday phone call, however, that should Israel stage a similar operation as it did earlier this week, he shouldn’t expect the U.S. to come to its defense, one U.S. official told Axios.

“I had a very direct meeting with the prime minister today. Very direct,” Biden told reporters on Thursday evening following his call with Netanyahu. When asked whether Haniyeh’s death would impact ceasefire talks, Biden said “It’s not helped.”

Featured Image Credit: Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith

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Sec Def Austin Unveils $400 Million Arms Package For Ukraine — But One Thing Is Missing

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jake Smith

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Ukraine but isn’t bringing the good news Kyiv wants to hear, as the country continues to struggle to hold the front line amid Russian advances.

Austin has been intimately involved over the last two years in overseeing U.S. military aid to Ukraine, of which there has been approximately $70 billion. The Defense Secretary touched down in Ukraine on Sunday in a show of continued support and announced a new $400 million arms package, but won’t be giving Kyiv what it really wants — the ability to use U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory, according to multiple reports.

The request to use the missiles for such a purpose has been something Ukraine has asked for for months; as Ukraine can’t produce such weapons, it is looking to the U.S. and Europe for help.

Austin arrived in Ukraine without signaling that the request would be filled, and that’s likely to leave Kyiv unsatisfied. The administration has been hesitant to allow Ukraine to use U.S. or European-provided missiles to conduct long-range attacks against Russia, in part because it could escalate the war and drag the U.S. further into the conflict.

“We think it is wrong that there are such steps,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in early September, according to The Washington Post. “We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

The idea has been frequently discussed between U.S. and Ukrainian officials but nothing has come to fruition. Austin has also previously said that he doesn’t think it would significantly improve Ukraine’s odds of victory, noting in an early September press conference that “there’s no one capability that will in and of itself be decisive in this campaign.”

Ukraine is also pressing the administration for NATO membership, but Austin had no new updates to give on that request either, according to reports. The Biden-Harris administration has said that Ukraine’s fate is eventually to join NATO but hasn’t provided a timeline for when.

However, the U.S. is providing Ukraine with $400 million worth of weapons systems, Austin announced on Monday, including munitions, armored vehicles and tanks, according to reports. The aid will certainly meet some of the needs of Ukraine’s military but is not as large as some of the prior multi-billion dollar packages.

“The United States understands the stakes here, Mr. President,” Austin told Ukrainian Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday, Reuters reported.

President Joe Biden’s options to help Ukraine are starting to run out as he prepares to leave office in January. Even with U.S. and European-provided military aid, it has done little more than help Ukraine maintain a defensive position against Russia, which has shown no signs of stopping its invasion campaign.

Russia launched sweeping missile and drone strikes against targets in Eastern Ukraine over the weekend ahead of Austin’s visit, according to Reuters. Ukrainian forces staged a successful incursion into regions in Western Russia at the end of the summer but Russian forces have started to retake some of the territory in recent weeks, The New York Times reported.

The odds that Biden can secure substantially more funding from Congress to aid Ukraine are slim; it was already difficult for the president to secure the last $60 billion aid package in April, as the sentiment among some lawmakers is that the administration doesn’t seem to have a plan to end the war and move Ukraine toward victory.

It will be either presidential candidates Donald Trump or Kamala Harris who will have to pick up where Biden left off. Harris would likely mirror Biden’s approach to the war and continue strong U.S. support for Ukraine’s military campaign, but some critics fear that she lacks the needed foreign policy wisdom to properly maneuver the conflict.

Trump has vowed to end the war before January if he’s elected in November, touting his ability to negotiate with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also signaled he may end military aid to Ukraine in favor of seeking a peaceful settlement between Kyiv and Moscow.

Austin on Monday dismissed ideas that U.S. support for Ukraine would end if Trump were elected in November.

“I’ve seen bipartisan support for Ukraine over the last 2-1/2 years, and I fully expect that we’ll continue to see the bipartisan support from Congress,” Austin said, according to Reuters.

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Middle East War Shows No Signs Of Stopping One Year After Oct. 7 — And No Clear Path To Exit

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jake Smith

The chaos of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel is still being felt one year later as the broader region grapples with a conflict that has shown no signs of stopping.

Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attacks caught Israel by surprise and resulted in the murder of approximately 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds of others, including American citizens. Israel retaliated and launched a war against Hamas in Gaza, which a year later has not ended but instead spilled into the broader Middle East and drawn in other bad actors such as Hezbollah and Iran.

“We’re still stuck in Oct. 7, 2023, in one unending day of terror, of fear, of anger, of despair,” Yuval Baron, an Israeli citizen whose father-in-law is still being held by Hamas in Gaza, told Reuters.

Israeli forces have largely occupied Gaza and killed thousands of Hamas operatives, largely crippling the terrorist group’s capabilities, although it has come at great humanitarian cost to the enclave, according to Reuters. The conflict has displaced millions of Palestinians and wreaked havoc across Gaza, leaving many areas uninhabitable, Bloomberg reported.

The effort to build Gaza after the fighting ends — whenever that may be — will likely be an incredibly costly venture that could take years and require joint cooperation between several Arab states, according to Bloomberg. Millions of tons of debris will have to be cleared from the enclave while buildings are repaired or replaced.

“We thought it would be two months [of fighting] — at most,”  Mohammed Shakib Hassan, a Palestinian civil servant who fled his home after Israeli forces entered Gaza last year, told The New York Times. “Twelve months have passed in front of our eyes.”

Israel, with the help of the U.S., has on several occasions made offers for a ceasefire in Gaza conditioned on the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas and the surrender of the terrorist group, but these proposals have been rejectedmultiple times. Yayha Sinwar, the leader of Hamas who has been hiding underground in Gaza, reportedly believes that he is not going to survive the war and has zero intention of reaching a ceasefire deal with Israel at this point in the conflict, according to U.S. intelligence assessments reviewed by The New York Times.

The Biden-Harris administration has spent months brokering negotiations between Israel and Hamas and working with regional mediators to try to reach a deal, but these efforts have largely been fruitless. Though President Biden has on several occasions predicted that a ceasefire could be reached in short order, his own officials now privately believe it will be near impossible to get a deal done between now and January, the end of Biden’s term.

“They’re probably not going to get one before the election, or before January either. But that’s not on them, per se. It speaks to the difficulty of how far apart [Israel and Hamas] are,” former State Department official Gabriel Noronha told the Daily Caller News Foundation in September.

There have been various roadblocks to getting a deal done. Specifically, Israel wants to leave troops along the Gaza-Egyptian border, arguing that it would stonewall Hamas from trafficking in weapons, but Hamas has rejected this term.

Though the prospects of a deal are unlikely at this point, Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has largely come to a close as the terrorist group’s capabilities have been vastly diminished.

“Hamas is a shadow of its former self. Israel is going to continue to try to eradicate them, but it’s sort of a guerilla campaign. Hamas is being starved and smoked out. I suspect that you’re going to see Hamas go underground somewhat — more figuratively than literally at this point,” Noronha told the DCNF last month.

Instead, Israel has shifted much of its forces and focus away from Gaza and toward Lebanon, which houses the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Hezbollah is Iran’s largest terrorist group in the Middle East and has engaged in cross-fire skirmishes with Israel since last October out of support for Hamas, displacing thousands of civilians near the Israel-Lebanon border, according to NPR.

Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah have reached a boiling point in recent weeks, as Israel has launched sweeping airstrikes against the terrorist group in southern Lebanon and killed the group’s leader in an airstrike in late September, according to The Washington Post. Israeli forces have begun ground raids against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, in what could be the prelude to a much larger ground invasion.

The Biden-Harris Administration, along with other allies, also put forward on Sep. 26 a separate ceasefire proposal for Israel and Hezbollah, although it was seemingly ignored by both parties.

“It’s clear that Israel is determined to rid Lebanon of Hezbollah,” senior fellow at the Strauss Center and former Pentagon official Simone Ledeen told the DCNF. “They need Hezbollah to lay down their arms and surrender… the Israelis [are] really focused on getting to that objective.”

The multi-front Middle East conflict extends also to Iran, which — though it has helped orchestrate and fund the various terror attacks against Israel — made an unprecedented move in April and launched a sweeping missile strike against Israel from directly within Iran’s borders, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iran launched a similar attack against Israel last week in the form of roughly 180 missiles, most of which were intercepted by U.S. and Israeli forces.

Israel is expected to respond with an attack directly against Iran, although the timing and nature of the move is publicly unknown. The Biden-Harris administration is helping coordinate the attack with Israel, though it wants Israel to avoidgoing after the country’s nuclear facilities.

“The launch of over 180 ballistic missiles by Tehran requires a decisive reaction to prevent future attacks,” Israeli intelligence agent Avi Melamed said in a statement on Monday. “Currently, it seems that Israel is finalizing its operational plans while the U.S. prepares munitions to defensively counter any potential Iranian counterstrike.”

The conflict extends even further into Iraq, Syria and Yemen, all hotspots for other various Iranian-backed terrorist groups that have attacked U.S. and Israeli forces in the region since last October, according to Axios. Israeli forces have launched a series in those regions, too, in recent months.

Until the current Middle East conflict comes to an end, the possibility of regional peace may be too far out of reach, even as that remains a goal for other key Arab states and Western nations. Iran’s “axis of resistance” has taken severe blows since last October, according to Axios.

But Israeli forces are stretched across multiple fronts in a conflict with no clear end game, and the Israeli people seem to be growing more and more weary of the conflict; 23% of Israelis considered leaving the country in the last year, according to a recent poll cited by Axios.

“This war won’t end because nobody is willing to blink,” Thomas Nides, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the Times. “In the meantime, everyone is losing — hostages and their families, innocent Palestinians, Israelis displaced from northern Israel, Lebanese civilians. And it’s truly tragic.”

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