US ‘doodling red lines’ again as a storm approaches

Alameen Templeton
What the heck does the US think it’s doing?”
Not for the first time, Arabia observers are wondering down which rabbit hole the US is wandering as it lays down a two-week deadline for a Gaza peace deal while issuing arrest warrants for Hamas leaders who’re supposed to be at the talks table.
Pro-US news outlets are at pains Wednesday to reassure readers the arrest warrants are a purely “symbolic gesture”, pointing out that three of the six accused are already dead, assassinated by Israel.
Only Yahya Sinwar, leading from the front in Gaza, Khaled Meshaal, heading the diaspora office in Doha, and Ali Baraka, based in Lebanon, are still breathing. Mohammad Deif, murdered in a July airstrike, Marwan Issa, assassinated in March, and Ismail Haniyeh, butchered in July, remain for unexplained reasons on the wanted list.
‘Doodling red lines again’
“We can only assume the United States’ latest ‘two-week deadline’ demand is also a purely symbolic gesture. It certainly has shown no real interest in enforcing any agreements made at talks for 10 months now and Hamas won’t return to the table until they see genuine movement from the Israelis,” a diplomatic source told Markas Sahaba.
“Biden is doodling red lines in a sandstorm. Again. His deadline will be forgotten even before the two weeks are over,” one talks observer said.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the accused “have led Hamas’s efforts to destroy the State of Israel and murder civilians in support of that aim”.
Rami Khouri, a American University of Beirut fellow, told Al Jazeera the US arrest warrants undermined its status as a mediator in ceasefire talks.
‘Not an honest broker’
“The United States has been heavily, enthusiastically and vigorously supporting Israel in its current actions in Gaza – in what the UN calls a plausible genocide. And it has long opposed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, designating them as terrorist groups,” Khouri said.
The decision to issue the arrest warrants showed “the United States is very keen to hold Hamas responsible for its actions but has no similar desire to hold Israel accountable for its actions,” Khouri said.
“And, therefore, in the eyes of most of the world, the United States is not an honest broker, but is complicit in the Israeli genocide”, he added.
Turkiye echoed the sentiment, accusing the US of lying about the success of the talks that it has insisted at “progressing positively” while it exerts no pressure on Israel.
“The US has told [Hamas] that they would continue the current talks for two more weeks and then end them if there is no resolution,” a Turkiye foreign ministry spokesman told Middle East Eye.
Discredited demands
He accused the US of allowing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ride roughshod over every breakthrough, pointing to his latest demands of continuing Israeli control of the Netzarim and Philadelphi Corridors as examples of Bibi stalling.
The US allows Netanyahu to add any demand he likes even though his corridor demands have been discredited as unnecessary distractions by both Mossad and his defence minister.
Mossad boss, David Barnea, has rejected Netanyahu’s latest “Corridor demands” insisting they hold no operational value for Israel.
“My personal position is that it would be better to withdraw from Philadelphi and Netzarim to recover the captives; there is no operational need for these two routes,” he told Israeli media last week.
Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, said Netanyahu prized his unnecessary demands over the lives of captives, describing the prime minister’s actions as “disgraceful”.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have protested in recent days demanding Netanyahu reaches a deal with Hamas to free the captives.