After a year of war in Gaza, American diplomacy proves futile so far: ANALYSIS

During Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first emergency mission to the Middle East in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, he emerged from a marathon session of meetings in an Israeli command center that stretched into the early hours of the morning to announce that President Joe Biden would soon visit the country “to reaffirm the United States’ solidarity with Israel.”

But the announcement heralding the president’s travel was far more than a straightforward show of support. It was a reward that had been dangled before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the nine hours of negotiations preceding it as U.S. officials told Israel to end its total blockade of the Gaza Strip so that desperately needed humanitarian aid could enter.

Just 10 days into the Israel-Hamas war, the Biden administration was already confronting a difficult reality of diplomacy — as difficult as it is to negotiate with one’s enemies, it’s often even more challenging to deal with allies.

After a full year of fighting, efforts to restore peace have proven futile so far, and mitigating the conflict’s worst impacts continues to be a daily struggle. As the ongoing crisis continues to escalate, experts and officials weigh in on how the U.S. has influenced the Israel-Hamas war over the past 12 months, and on what might come next.

A fixed playbook for a volatile crisis

Soon after the militants who carried out the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, retreated into Gaza with more than 200 hostages in tow, it became clear to U.S. officials that a negotiated agreement was likely the only way to rescue a majority of the captives.

By Thanksgiving, mediators had reached a deal for a temporary truce and a prisoner exchange that ultimately saw more than 100 Israelis and foreign nationals returned home.

At that point, the Biden administration was already struggling to reconcile its unwavering military support for Israel amid the staggering loss of life in Gaza and keenly aware of the building political blowback at home. White House and State Department officials held their breath when the short cease-fire began in November 2023, hopeful it could be lengthened until an uneasy peace turned into the status quo.

Those dreams quickly evaporated. Blinken had traveled to Israel again in an attempt to extend the pause in fighting, but before he left, fighting had erupted again.

The Biden administration and other mediators have been chasing a similar deal ever since, pushing for round after round of indirect talks that eventually ended in a frustrating collapse, even as rewards for both sides of the conflict have diminished.

Almost 100 hostages are believed to still be held in Gaza by Hamas, but dozens of them are dead and officials say that, if realized, the frameworks that have been under consideration would only initially result in the freedom of around a dozen living captives.

As for Hamas, many Biden administration officials have quietly expressed deep skepticism that its leader, Yahya Sinwar, would ever agree to any deal that didn’t ensure his reign over Gaza would continue — a prospect both Israel and the U.S. flatly reject.

But despite the deadlock, the administration has continued to doggedly pursue a deal in a manner reminiscent of the apocryphal quote often attributed to scientist Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Marina Ottaway, a Middle East fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said there are many reasons for the repeated diplomatic failures, but that the nature of the parties involved cursed efforts to reach a lasting peace from the jump.

“The major players in the regional drama do not recognize the 21st-century international order and are not willing to abide by its rules,” she said. “The best diplomacy can do little when dealing with actors who play only by their own rules.”

Ottaway said Hamas and Hezbollah are driven by their ideological values rather than global norms and argues that Israel is also highly resistant to those standards.

“Yes, it is a state, an internationally recognized entity with a seat at the United Nations and in other international organizations, but it does not recognize the legitimacy of those organizations and their right to impose any restrictions on its actions,” she said.

Top U.S. officials have also remained myopically focused on the administration’s long-term vision for peace in the Middle East and its cornerstone: the normalization of diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

On the eve of Oct. 7, 2023, the two countries appeared closer to reaching a deal than ever before. But Saudi Arabia’s leadership has repeatedly insisted normalization can’t happen until an independent Palestinian state is created, a term the Israeli government now sees as a nonstarter.

“U.S. decision-makers seem to have not absorbed any lessons from the past year of conflict,” Dana El Kurd, a senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington, wrote in a piece for Foreign Policy. 

“Discussions of the ‘day after’ in Gaza remain out of touch with reality,” she added. “With no deviation from the current path, the tragedy will only continue.”

Strategic drift and a widening war

Beyond ending the war in Gaza, preventing its spread to other areas has been the Biden administration’s most pressing aim in the Middle East for most of the past year.

After simmering tensions between Hezbollah and Israel exploded at the country’s northern border with Lebanon last month, the U.S. initially pushed for a truce — and then all but dropped its efforts to secure a cease-fire, vocally backing Israel’s campaign as it began to eliminate top terror targets.

Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Middle East Institute, said the Biden administration is now trapped in this cycle of reactivity, which he attributes to what he said is its “wishful thinking” and an “unwillingness to exert leverage” to achieve its own objectives.

“The basic impulse of the Biden administration [is] to avoid adopting a more proactive stance in its diplomatic and military approaches across the Middle East,” he said. “The current crisis will likely shape and define America’s relationship with the region for years to come.”

Israel’s intensifying battle against Hezbollah — Iran’s most well-armed proxy — and its promise to retaliate after a direct attack launched by Tehran threatens to plunge the Middle East into a regional war. 

But some see a silver lining. Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the expanding conflict presents an opportunity to cut back Iran’s influence over the region once and for all.

“Israel is finally executing a victory strategy to defeat Iran and its axis of terror in the Middle East,” he said, adding that a successful result would be “not just a win for Israel but a major achievement for American grand strategy.”

Diminishing alliance, diminishing influence

Biden has long viewed foreign diplomacy as a strong suit — an area where his personal connections to world leaders have produced favorable results time and time again throughout his storied career.

The relationship between the president and the Israeli prime minister has always been complicated, but characterized overall by a grudging, mutual respect. On a few occasions throughout the last year, Biden has been able to effectively persuade Netanyahu to make significant concessions — including during an April phone call where he convinced him to take steps to protect aid workers in Gaza following an Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers.

But now, Biden and Netanyahu haven’t spoken since August. The prime minister traveled to New York in late September, but the two leaders didn’t meet. Additionally, Blinken hasn’t traveled to Israel since the summer.

Joe Macaron, a global fellow with the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, argued that as the administration’s influence over the Israeli government has eroded, so too has America’s influence over the region as a whole.

“The U.S. is now perceived as complicit with Netanyahu or unable to influence a key ally,” he said. “The damage to U.S. image and interests in the Middle East should not be underestimated, and the long-term game is the most effective one; there are no quick fixes to the threats of the Iranian regime and its proxies.”

With just over 100 days of the presidential term remaining, it appears that charting a course forward for the U.S.-Israel alliance is a task that will fall to the next commander in chief. Biden marked the first anniversary of Oct. 7 not with a call to Netanyahu, but with a moment of silence at the White House.