Biden Seizes on Israel-Hezbollah Deal to Push for Broader Mideast Peace

The Washington Post / Yasmeen Abutaleb

12:51 JST, November 27, 2024

President Joe Biden sought to capitalize on the announcement of a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah on Tuesday by urging an end to the deadly fighting in Gaza and making a last-ditch push for a broader Middle East peace deal with less than two months left in office.

“Just as the Lebanese people deserve a future of security and prosperity, so do the people of Gaza. They, too, deserve an end to the fighting and displacement,” Biden said in remarks from the White House Rose Garden. “The people of Gaza have been through hell. Their world was absolutely shattered. Far too many civilians in Gaza have suffered far too much.”

Biden then said that the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah – designed as a permanent end to the fighting that will take hold over 60 days – creates an opportunity for a long-sought broader Middle East deal that he and his top aides have talked about for years. That deal would see a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, provide a pathway for a Palestinian state, and include a security pact and economic guarantees that the United States would provide Riyadh.

“As for the broader Middle East region, today’s announcement brings us closer to realizing the affirmative agenda that I’ve been pushing forward during my entire presidency: a vision for the Middle East, with peace and prosperity integrated across borders,” Biden said. “The United States remains prepared to conclude a set of historic deals.”

It remains unclear how much the Biden administration has spoken to or coordinated with the transition team of President-elect Donald Trump, who probably would have to oversee such a deal because of the U.S. security guarantees provided to Saudi Arabia. Trump had at one point sought a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

“We have come to the conclusion that there is an opportunity, a window of opportunity here, if we can get some changes in Gaza, to be able to reach this normalization. Now, I think the political and geopolitical stars both are aligned,” a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said on a call with reporters.

The official added: “We are clear-eyed that there is a new administration coming in. … I’ve gotten every indication that the new team coming in are supportive of this approach.”

Trump has indicated to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would like to see Israel’s conflicts wrapped up by the time he enters office, and he has sought to take credit for any end to hostilities even before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

Trump has selected a number of officials for his administration who are staunchly pro-Israel, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) as U.N. ambassador; former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who believes Jews have a biblical right to Palestinian land, including the West Bank, as U.S. ambassador to Israel; and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) as secretary of state. It is not clear how much Trump or his top deputies would push for a Palestinian state or what other policies they might pursue in the Middle East.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), Trump’s pick as his White House national security adviser, said in a post on X that Trump’s election had brought “everyone … to the table.”

But the senior Biden administration official said the outline of the deal had been in place by mid- to late October. “They were not involved in these negotiations, which reached the most intense point before the election,” the official said. Several days before the Nov. 5 election, the official said, Israel asked U.S. officials to travel to Jerusalem to meet with Netanyahu, who “thought there was a window.”

“After the election, when I thought we had reached a point where I could see the light at the end of the tunnel … I briefed President-elect Trump’s national security team on the contents of the deal … what the negotiations were and what the commitments were.” Another round of briefings for the Trump team was conducted “in the last 24 to 48 hours,” the official said. “They seemed to be supportive.”

The cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah marks a crucial accomplishment for Biden shortly before he leaves office, and one that the United States has been trying to negotiate for months in fits and starts.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, when militants killed 1,200 people and took some 250 hostage. Israel launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon in October – even as the United States tried to prevent such an escalation – that has killed more than 3,700 people and displaced about 1.2 million people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Since the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah’s rocket barrages have forced Israel to evacuate about 67,500 people from communities in the north, according to the Taub Center, and many of those towns and cities remain largely empty. Israel’s retaliatory strikes on southern Lebanon have displaced more than 300,000 people.

The deal will unfold over the next 60 days, Biden said, as the Lebanese military will take control of the country’s territory along Lebanon’s southern border. Hezbollah will not be allowed to rebuild infrastructure, such as tunnels, that has been destroyed along the Israeli border, and Israel will gradually withdraw its remaining forces from Lebanon over that time period.

The United States and France will help ensure the deal is fully implemented, Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron said in a joint statement. U.S. officials have expressed optimism that Israel’s assassinations of Hezbollah leaders over the past several weeks could present an opportunity for the Lebanese government to retake control of the country, but experts have warned that task remains extraordinarily complicated. Lebanon has not had a president for more than two years.

Netanyahu warned that Israel would strike Lebanon if Hezbollah were to violate the new cease-fire, and fighting between the two sides continued Tuesday even as negotiations moved forward. Israel issued evacuation orders for more than 20 locations in Beirut’s suburbs and struck a multistory building in the capital’s Nuwairi area, killing at least three people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

The deal is set to go into effect Wednesday at 4 a.m. local time.

Yet even as Biden expressed optimism about reaching a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, that deal remains far more elusive, and Biden is much more likely to end his term without having resolved one of the biggest foreign policy crises of his presidency.

Experts and analysts have long said reaching a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah is far more likely than a deal in Gaza, and U.S. officials had privately expressed more optimism for a deal in Lebanon than one in Gaza before Tuesday. The United States believes up to five Americans held hostage in Gaza are still alive.

Israel’s scorched-earth military campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians and fueled an unrelenting humanitarian catastrophe. That war upended Biden’s final year in office as he faced pro-Palestinian protesters at nearly every public event and even outside his home in Wilmington, Delaware. Some Democrats believe that anger at Biden’s handling of the war played a role in Vice President Kamala Harris’s election loss.

Despite widespread global criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and, to a lesser extent, in Lebanon, Biden has refused to use the biggest leverage he has to try to pressure Israel to limit civilian casualties or end the war: conditioning or suspending the supply of offensive weapons. The United States has sent billions of dollars’ worth of military aid to Israel since the Oct. 7 attack, even as it has lambasted “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza and Israel’s failure to allow in more desperately needed humanitarian aid, including basic necessities such as food, water and medicine.

In October, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to senior Israeli officials warning that they would resort to punitive measures, potentially including a suspension of military aid, if humanitarian aid flows were not increased within a month. But the Biden administration ultimately decided not to take action earlier this month even as humanitarian aid groups said the situation in Gaza had not meaningfully improved.

There has been little progress for months on reaching an end to the hostilities between Israel and Hamas, even as the United States says Israel has achieved everything it can militarily against the group, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.

Israel resumed operations in Gaza’s isolated north in early October with an operation that has seen some of the deadliest fighting of the war, as the Israel Defense Forces sealed off the area – still home to about 400,000 people – to most aid deliveries, which critics charged was a first step in the implementation of a plan proposed by a former Israeli general to starve out the population and kill those who remained.

The Israeli government has denied that the so-called “General’s Plan” is official policy, but Netanyahu has rejected U.S. entreaties to publicly disavow it.