SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
joe biden
43 Lawmakers Back Youth in Climate Case Against US Government
A 17-year-old plaintiff commended the federal lawmakers for "using their voices to weigh in on the importance of our rights to access justice and to a livable climate."
Jan 13, 2025
Dozens of members of Congress on Monday submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting 21 youth plaintiffs who launched a historic constitutional climate case against the federal government nearly a decade ago.
Since Juliana v. United States was first filed in the District of Oregon in August 2015, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have fought against it. Last May, a panel of three judges appointed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by President-elect Donald Trump granted a request by President Joe Biden's Department of Justice to dismiss the case.
After the U.S. Supreme Court in November denied the youth plaintiffs' initial request for intervention regarding the panel's decision, their attorneys filed a different type of petition last month. As Our Children's Trust, which represents the 21 young people, explains on its website, they argued to the justices that federal courts are empowered by the U.S. Constitution and the Declaratory Judgment Act (DJA) "to resolve active disputes between citizens and their government when citizens are being personally injured by government policies, even if the relief is limited to a declaration of individual rights and government wrongs."
The Monday filing from seven U.S. senators and 36 members of the House of Representatives argues to the nation's top court that "the 9th Circuit's dismissal of the petitioners' constitutional suit for declaratory relief has no basis in law and threatens to undermine the Declaratory Judgment Act, one of the most consequential remedial statutes that Congress has ever enacted."
The Supreme Court "should grant the petition to clarify that declaratory relief under the DJA satisfies the Article III redressability requirement," wrote the federal lawmakers, led by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). "Doing so is necessary because Congress expressly authorized declaratory relief 'whether or not further relief is or could be sought.'"
"The 9th Circuit's jurisdictional holding, which prevented the district court from even reaching the question whether declaratory relief would be appropriate, conflicts with this court's holding that the DJA is constitutional," the lawmakers continued. "It also conflicts with this court's holding that Article III courts may not limit DJA relief to cases where an injunction would be appropriate."
In a Monday statement, Juliana's youngest plaintiff, 17-year-old Levi D., welcomed the support from the 43 members of Congress—including Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as well as Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
"After 10 years of delay, I have spent more than half of my life as a plaintiff fighting for my fundamental rights to a safe climate. Yet, the courthouse doors are still closed to us," said Levi. "Five years ago, members of Congress stood by me and my co-plaintiffs on the steps of the Supreme Court. Today, as the climate crisis worsens and hurricanes ravage my home state of Florida, they are still with us, using their voices to weigh in on the importance of our rights to access justice and to a livable climate."
"The recent win in Held v. State of Montana and historic settlement in Navahine v. Hawaii Department of Transportation showed the world that young people's voices, my voice, and legal action are not just symbolic, but they hold governments accountable to protect our constitutional rights," Levi added. "Now, it's our turn to be heard!"
The lawmakers weren't alone in formally supporting the young climate advocates on Monday. Public Justice and the Montana Trial Lawyers Association filed another brief that takes aim at the government's use of mandamus—a court order directing a lower entity to perform official duties—to deny the Juliana youth a trial.
"The government's sole argument to justify mandamus is the Department of Justice's past and anticipated future litigation expenses associated with going to trial. That argument is firmly foreclosed by precedent," the groups argued. "And even if it wasn't foreclosed by precedent, the argument trivializes the extraordinary nature of mandamus and would improperly circumvent the final judgment rule."
The organizations urged the high court to grant certiorari to uphold the mandamus standard set out in Cheney v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 2004. Plaintiff Miko V. said Monday that "I'm incredibly grateful to Public Justice and the Montana Trial Lawyers Association for standing with us in our fight for justice."
"We're not asking for special treatment; we're demanding the right to access justice, as our constitutional democracy guarantees," Miko stressed. "The recent victory in Held v. State of Montana demonstrates the power of youth-led legal action, and the urgent need for courts to recognize that our generation has the right to hold our government accountable. Every day that the government prevents us from presenting our case, we all lose more ground in the fight for a livable future. It's time for the judiciary to open the courthouse doors and allow us a fair trial."
The briefs came just a week before Big Oil-backed Trump's second inauguration and on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected attempts by fossil fuel giants to quash a Hawaiian municipality's lawsuit that aims to hold the climate polluters accountable, in line with justices' previous decisions. Dozens of U.S. state and local governments have filed similar suits.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Key to Peace in Ukraine Remains What It Has Always Been
Neutrality resolves the root causes of the conflict for all the countries involved, and therefore provides a stable and sustainable solution.
Jan 13, 2025
President-elect Trump said on January 9th that he is planning a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine. He said “Putin wants to meet,” because “we have to get that war over with.” So what are the chances that a new administration in Washington can break the deadlock and finally bring peace to Ukraine?
During both of his election campaigns, Trump said he wanted to end the wars the U.S. was involved in. But in his first term, Trump himself exacerbated all the major crises he is now confronting. He escalated Obama’s military “pivot to Asia” against China, disregarded Obama’s fears that sending “lethal” aid to Ukraine would lead to war with Russia, withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran, and encouraged Netanyahu’s ambitions to land-grab and massacre his way to a mythical “Greater Israel.”
However, of all these crises, the one that Trump keeps insisting he really wants to resolve is the war in Ukraine, which Russia launched and the U.S. and NATO then chose to prolong, leading to hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian casualties. The Western powers have until now been determined to fight this war of attrition to the last Ukrainian, in the vain hope that they can somehow eventually defeat and weaken Russia without triggering a nuclear war.
Trump rightly blames Biden for blocking the peace agreement negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in March and April 2022, and for the three more years of war that have resulted from that deadly and irresponsible decision.
Neutrality would give Ukraine a chance to transform itself from a New Cold War disaster zone, where greedy foreign oligarchs gobble up its natural resources on the cheap, into a bridge connecting east and west, whose people can reap the benefits of all kinds of commercial, social and cultural relations with all their neighbors.
While Russia should be condemned for its invasion, Trump and his three predecessors all helped to set the stage for war in Ukraine: Clinton launched NATO’s expansion into eastern Europe, against the advice of leading American diplomats; Bush promised Ukraine it could join NATO, ignoring even more urgent diplomatic warnings; and Obama supported the 2014 coup that plunged Ukraine into civil war.
Trump himself began sending weapons to Ukraine to fight the self-declared “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, even though the Minsk II Accord’s OSCE-monitored ceasefire was largely holding and had greatly reduced the violence of the civil war from its peak in 2014 and 2015.
Trump’s injection of U.S. weapons was bound to reinflame the conflict and provoke Russia, especially as one of the first units trained on new U.S. weapons was the infamous Azov Regiment, which Congress cut off from U.S. arms and training in 2018 due to its central role as a hub for transnational neo-Nazi organizing.
So what will it take to negotiate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine? The answer has been hidden in plain sight, obscured by the rote repetition of deceptive rhetoric from Ukrainian and Western officials, claiming that Russia has refused to negotiate or that, if not stopped in Ukraine, Russia will invade NATO countries, such as Poland or the Baltic states.
The agreement that had Ukrainian negotiators popping champagne corks when they returned from Turkey at the end of March 2022 was referred to by all sides as a “Neutrality Agreement,” and nothing has changed in the strategic picture to suggest that Ukrainian neutrality is any less central to peace today.
A neutral Ukraine means that it would not join NATO or participate in joint NATO military exercises, nor would it allow foreign military bases on its territory. This would satisfy Russia’s security interests, while Ukraine’s security would be guaranteed by other powerful nations, including NATO members.
The fact that Russia was ready to so quickly end the war on that basis is all the evidence an objective observer should need to recognize that Ukrainian neutrality was always Russia’s most critical war aim. And the celebrations of the Ukrainian negotiators on their return from Turkey confirm that the Ukrainians willingly accepted Ukrainian neutrality as the basis for a peace agreement. "Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it,” Zelensky declared in March 2022.
Neutrality would give Ukraine a chance to transform itself from a New Cold War disaster zone, where greedy foreign oligarchs gobble up its natural resources on the cheap, into a bridge connecting east and west, whose people can reap the benefits of all kinds of commercial, social and cultural relations with all their neighbors.
While Russia should be condemned for its invasion, Trump and his three predecessors all helped to set the stage for war in Ukraine
Biden justified endlessly prolonging the war by stressing territorial questions and insisting that Ukraine must recover all the territory it has lost since the 2014 coup. By contrast, Russia has generally prioritized the destruction of enemy forces and NATO weapons over occupying more territory.
As Russia inexorably occupies the remainder of Donetsk oblast (province) after three years of war, it has still not moved to occupy Kramatorsk or Sloviansk, the large twin cities in the north of that oblast where 250,000 people live. They were among the first cities to rise up against the post-coup government in 2014, and were besieged and recaptured by Ukrainian government forces in the first major battle of the civil war in July 2014.
Neither has Russia pushed further westward into the neighboring oblasts of Kharkiv or Dnipropetrovsk. Nor has it launched a much-predicted offensive to occupy Odesa in the south-west, despite its strategic location on the Black Sea, its history as a Russian city with a Russian-speaking population, the infamous massacre of 42 anti-coup protesters there by a mob led by Right Sector in May 2014, and its current role as a hotbed of draft resistance in Ukraine.
If Russia’s goal was to annex as much of Ukraine as possible, or to use it as a stepping-stone to invade Poland or other European countries, as Western politicians have regularly claimed, Ukraine’s largest cities would have been prime targets.
But it has done the opposite. It even withdrew from Kherson in November 2022, after occupying it for eight months. NATO leaders had previously decided that the fall of Kherson to Ukrainian government forces would be the chance they were waiting for to reopen peace negotiations from a position of strength, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley argued they should “seize the moment” to do so. Instead, President Biden put the kibosh on yet another chance for peace.
When Congress approved another $60 billion for weapons shipments to Ukraine in April 2024, Senator and now Vice President-elect J.D. Vance voted against the bill. Vance explained his vote in an op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that the war was not winnable and that Biden should start talking to Putin.
In explaining why Ukraine could not win, Vance relied heavily on testimony by NATO’s top military commander, U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, to the House Armed Services Committee. Vance wrote that even the most optimistic projections of the impact of the weapons bill could not make up for the massive imbalance between Russian and Ukrainian armaments and forces. Cavoli told the committee that Russia already outgunned Ukraine by 5-to-1 in artillery shells, and that a European push to produce a million shells in the past year had yielded only 600,000.
While Ukraine was desperate for more Patriot missiles to intercept 4,000 Russian missile and drone strikes per month, the U.S. could only provide 650 in the next year, even with the additional funds, due to the massive amount of weapons being shipped to Israel or already promised to Taiwan.
Both Russia and Ukraine have covered up their casualties with propaganda, underestimating their own casualties and exaggerating their enemies’, to mislead their own people, their allies and their enemies alike. General Cavoli testified under oath that over 315,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and wounded. But he went on to say that, by calling up reserves and conscripting new troops, Russia had not only made up those losses but increased its overall troop strength by 15%, and was well on the way to building a 1.5 million-strong army.
Ukraine, on the other hand, has a recruitment crisis, due to an underlying demographic shortage of young men caused by a very low birth-rate in the 1990s, when living standards and life expectancy plummeted under the impact of Western-backed economic shock treatment. This has now been severely compounded by the impacts of the war.
Ella Libanova, a demographer at Ukraine’s National Academy of Science, estimated to Reuters in July 2023 that, with so many people leaving the country and building new lives in other countries as the war drags on, the total population in government-held areas might already have fallen as low as 28 million, from a total population of 45 million ten years ago. It must surely be even lower now.
Based on huge imbalances in artillery shells and other weapons, Ukrainian and U.S. claims that Ukraine has suffered much lower casualties than Russia are frankly unbelievable, and some analysts believe Ukrainian casualties have been much higher than Russia’s. The declining morale of its troops, increased draft resistance, desertion, and emigration from Ukraine have all combined to shrink the available pool of new conscripts.
Vance concluded, “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president.”
In his press conference on January 3rd, President-elect Trump framed the need for peace in Ukraine as a question of basic humanity. “I don’t think it’s appropriate that I meet [Putin] until after the 20th, which I hate because every day people are being—many, many young people are being killed, soldiers,” Trump said.
More and more Ukrainians agree. While opinion polls soon after Russia’s invasion showed 72% wanting to fight until victory, that is now down to 38%. Most Ukrainians want quick negotiations and are open to making territorial concessions as part of a peace deal.
In recent interviews, President Zelensky has been softening his position, suggesting that Ukraine is willing to cede territory to Russia to end the war as long as the rest of the country is protected by a “NATO umbrella.” But NATO membership for Ukraine has always been totally unacceptable to the Russians, and so the 2022 neutrality agreement instead provided for security guarantees by which other countries, including individual NATO members, would guarantee Ukraine’s security.
Trump’s peace plan is rumored to entail freezing the current geographical positions and shelving Ukraine’s accession to NATO for 20 years. But continuing to dangle NATO membership in front of Ukraine, as the U.S. has bullied NATO into doing since 2008, is a root cause of this conflict, not a solution. Neutrality, on the other hand, resolves the root causes of the conflict for all the countries involved, and therefore provides a stable and sustainable solution.
There are many things we both disagree with Donald Trump about. But the need for peace in Ukraine is one thing we agree on. We hope Trump understands that Ukrainian neutrality is the key to peace and the best hope for the future of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and Europe, and, in fact, for the survival of human civilization.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The US-Israeli False Narrative on Gaza Cease-Fire Talks
Rather than tell the truth about Netanyahu repeatedly foiling the talks, the outgoing president and his administration are choosing instead to try and rewrite the history of what has really unfolded over 15 months of negotiations.
Jan 11, 2025
Over the past months, outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken has given several interviews in which he repeatedly claims that Hamas, rather than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been the key obstacle to achieving a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza. This messaging has been echoed by other Biden administration officials and surrogates.
At a workshop in Geneva in November, a recently retired US ambassador, who had just returned from meeting White House officials, claimed, “There are currently three ceasefire deals on the table and Hamas isn’t responding to any of them.” The veteran diplomat acknowledged the suffering in Gaza but blamed it on Hamas’ “rejection” of an agreement to end the war.
To my surprise, a former senior Israeli security official in the room rushed to challenge this claim, which he described as a “shameful attempt to rewrite history and blame Hamas rather than Netanyahu for the obstruction of ceasefire talks.”
A few weeks later in Doha, I met a senior Arab official who emphasized to me one of the most crucial things Biden can do in his “lame duck” period is name and shame Netanyahu for systematically foiling ceasefire talks. But the official quickly added the White House is “instead rewriting history.”
Since July, all of the sources I have spoken to confirmed that Hamas had accepted Biden’s ceasefire proposal that was endorsed by the UN Security Council, which is premised on an 18-weeks long ceasefire divided into three phases, at the end of which there would be a permanent end to the Gaza war after all hostages have been released. The same sources, as well as Israeli media, and the Egyptian mediators have consistently blamed Netanyahu for obstructing the talks and refusing to end the war.
Even in the latest ongoing round of negotiations, senior Israeli security officials are sounding the alarm that their Prime Minister is still sabotaging the talks. Yet, the White House keeps insisting that Hamas is “the obstacle.”
The reality is that since July, US president Joe Biden has completely stopped pressuring Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire-hostage deal. Rather than tell the truth about Netanyahu repeatedly foiling the talks, the outgoing president and his administration are choosing instead to try and rewrite the history of what has really unfolded over 15 months of negotiations.
The Full Story
For the first four months of the Gaza war, the Biden administration opposed a full ceasefire, instead opting at best for a temporary “pause” to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, which was briefly achieved in late November 2023. Biden said earlier that month: “a cease-fire is not peace… every cease-fire is time [Hamas members] exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing.”
However, growing US domestic pressure, as well as Israel’s failure to locate and rescue the hostages combined with the sense that Israel had accomplished what it could militarily in Gaza eventually lifted Biden’s ban on using the word “ceasefire” by March 2024.
Talks began to mature with Qatari and Egyptian mediation throughout the spring, as the US exerted significant yet clearly inadequate pressure on Netanyahu, who had foiled two summits in Paris in January and February by procrastinating, severely limiting the mandate of Israeli negotiators, instructing ministers to attack any deal taking shape and publicly vowing to continue the war.
In early April, a concrete proposal was put on the table by the Qatari and Egyptian mediators and the US envisaging a ceasefire of three phases, six weeks each, in which hostages (including those deceased) would be gradually released in return for incremental withdrawal of Israeli forces from all of Gaza, an end to the war, and increased humanitarian and reconstruction aid. The first phase would have seen the release of 33 Israeli hostages.
Serious negotiations then took place in Cairo and Doha, with American officials making a genuine effort to narrow the gaps between the two sides. One senior Arab government source told me CIA director Bill Burns was at some point sitting literally in the room next door to where the Hamas delegation was negotiating in Cairo, and repeatedly amended the proposal with his own handwriting to get a deal done.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu sought to undermine those negotiations throughout April by consistently insisting on an imminent full invasion of Rafah and a continuation of the war after a pause. He also leaked sensitive classified information to extremist ministers in his government to derail the talks and restricted the mandate of Israeli negotiators.
A senior member of Israel’s negotiating team said in April that “Since January, it’s clear to everyone that we’re not conducting negotiations. It happens again and again: You get a mandate during the day, then the prime minister makes phone calls at night, instructs ‘don’t say that’ and ‘I’m not approving this,’ thus bypassing both the team leaders and the war cabinet.”
Throughout this period, Biden refrained completely from publicly calling out Netanyahu for explicitly sabotaging the talks.
On May 5, Hamas accepted the April proposal with reservations and amendments, but before the Israeli negotiating team got to formulate a response, Israel’s prime minister rushed to denounce Hamas’ position as “delusional” and ordered the immediate invasion of Rafah on May 7.
Biden, who had promised to halt arm supplies to Israel if it violated his “red line” of invading Rafah, decided to instead suspend one shipment of MK-84 2,000-pound bombs to Israel and nothing more.
The Only Realistic Deal
On May 31, Biden gave a televised speech presenting what he described as the outline of an Israeli ceasefire proposal submitted four days before. A senior Arab official confirmed to me in August that Biden’s proposal was in fact articulated by the Israeli team who turned to the White House after Netanyahu’s immediate answer was negative. That proposal had incorporated significant principles from Hamas’ May 5 response that Netanyahu had described as “delusional.”
Biden’s speech was designed to give Israel a victory narrative, stating that “At this point, Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another October 7th.” He warned “Indefinite war in pursuit of an unidentified notion of ‘total victory’… will only bog down Israel in Gaza, draining the economic, military, and human resources, and furthering Israel’s isolation in the world.”
11 days later, the proposal was formally endorsed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2735. However, Netanyahu rejected Biden’s speech as “not [an] accurate” reflection of Israeli positions, and repeatedly asserted his insistence on the continuation of the war. The White House chose again to blame Hamas for the deadlock instead of pressing Netanyahu.
After lengthy negotiations, on July 2 Hamas accepted an updated Biden proposal with minor amendments, particularly relating to assurances that the ceasefire would lead to ending the war instead of a mere pause, according to multiple senior Arab and Palestinianofficials involved in the talks.Hamas were informed that the US and Israeli negotiating team were both on board. However, a few days later, Netanyahu issued four new “non-negotiable” conditions that mediators and even Israeli security officials saw as intentionally sabotaging the deal. The conditions were: resuming the war after a pause “until [Israel’s] war aims are achieved”; no IDF withdrawal from the Philadelphia corridor between Rafah and Egypt; Israel would restrict the return of over one million displaced Gazans to the Northern half of the enclave; maximizing the number of living hostages to be released in the first phase.
Israel then quickly escalated its attacks in Gaza. On July 13 it killed Hamas’ chief military commander Mohammed al-Deif in a strike that killed over 100 civilians. On July 31, Netanyahu ordered the assassination of Hamas’ top negotiator, Ismael Haniya in Tehran. The day before, he ordered the assassination of Hezbollah’s top commander Fuad Shukur.
Multiple sources told me Hamas informed mediators that it still endorsed the July 2 ceasefire formula and UNSC resolution 2735. Biden called the Haniya assassination “not helpful” but that was it. Senior White House officials would then leak to Israeli media that Biden “realized Netanyahu lied to him” about the ceasefire-hostage deal, but the president himself never publicly called out Netanyahu.
Buying Time and Gaslighting
In August, ahead of the Democratic National Convention, the US opened a renewed round of negotiations, having received Iranian and Hezbollah promises of refraining from retaliation if a deal was reached.
Instead of building upon Biden’s proposal and pressing Israel to compromise, the Americans simply incorporated Netanyahu’s four impossible conditions as “a bridging proposal.” They attempted to entice Hamas to the table by getting Israel to reduce its veto on which Palestinian detainees it would release in a deal (Hamas presented a list of 300 heavily sentenced individuals, “the VIPs.” Netanyahu vetoed 100 names, including Marwan Barghouti, and insisted on only releasing prisoners with less than 22 years left in their sentence. The Americans lowered this veto to 75 names then 65 in August, per a senior Arab mediator).
Since then, the White House has attempted to re-write history and promote an official narrative blaming Hamas for Netanyahu’s systematic foiling of the talks.
A Palestinian source directly involved in the negotiations told me then that Hamas’ leader Yahia Sinwar sent them clear instructions to stick to the July 2 Biden proposal instead of getting stuck in a limbo of endless negotiations. Hamas refused to show up for the August round of talks as long as Israel rejected the most important two stipulations of Biden’s proposal: gradual IDF withdrawal from Gaza and ending the war.
Remarkably, the Americans pressed Egypt and Qatar to issue a false statement on August 16 that emphasized “talks were serious and constructive and were conducted in a positive atmosphere,” although there were no talks to begin with.
A senior Arab official involved in the negotiations told me both Israel, Qatar and Egypt objected to the idea of issuing this statement, but the Americans argued it was necessary to create domestic pressure on Netanyahu to narrow the gaps. The actual goal, according to this official, was likely to make it harder for Iran and Hezbollah to retaliate and to allow Kamala’s Democratic National Convention to pass peacefully without disruptions.
The official added that Netanyahu had been sending his advisor, Ophir Falk, to the talks to undermine Israel’s negotiating team, and that the US asked mediators on multiple occasions to prevent him from attending the meetings.
As soon as the DNC ended, Biden blamed Hamas again for the failure of the talks, and effectively stopped trying to get a deal, with US officials declaring in September that a ceasefire deal has become unlikely during Biden’s term. Since then, the White House has attempted to re-write history and promote an official narrative blaming Hamas for Netanyahu’s systematic foiling of the talks.
Amid the deadlock, Qatar declared in early November that it was suspending its mediation role, which a senior Arab official told me was intended to create domestic pressure on Netanyahu. The Qataris also suspended Hamas’ office in Doha and Hamas leaders left the country by mid-November.
A New Round, Little Hope
In early December, Hamas’ entire leadership were suddenly invited to Cairo then Doha for renewed negotiations. Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz quickly expressed unusual hope and optimism about a “real chance” for a deal this time.
However, multiple sources directly involved in these talks told me by then there was no real possibility of a breakthrough. The Hamas delegation kept waiting in Cairo until the last minute, with senior Hamas negotiator Bassem Naim being the last official departing from Egypt to Doha late at night on December 5, hoping for a positive change of position from the Israeli team, who still only offered a temporary pause.
A senior Arab official told me president-elect Donald Trump had asked the Qataris and Egyptians to get a deal done before he takes office. The official, however, added that Israel’s Prime Minister is not budging while at the same time issuing false positive statements of a breakthrough and progress to buy time and pretend to seek a deal until Trump is in office, where Netanyahu can trade the Gaza war for something big in the West Bank.
Between Doha and Cairo, a senior Palestinian official directly involved in the negotiations told me in December that “there are serious talks, there’s progress and discussions of details, but until today no one presented a final proposal to sign.” He added “Unless Netanyahu does something that takes us back to square one, there is great optimism that we can reach something within a short period.”
Israeli officials asserted the same night that a deal could be reached within two weeks, but warned that Netanyahu is still not “granting a sufficient mandate to the negotiating team,” adding “It will not be possible to return everyone without an end to the war.”
More than a month later, no deal is yet in sight, as Israeli security officials say Netanyahu still insists on delaying the withdrawal from the Philadelphia and Netzarim corridors, restricting the return of displaced Gazans to the north, continuing the war after a partial deal, and demanding a higher number of hostages in the first phase. This led the mother of Israeli hostage Matan Zangauker to lead a demonstration in front of Israel’s Knesset on Monday to protest “a partial deal with a return to fighting,” which she said would be “a death sentence for Matan and everyone left behind”.
Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said the same day “Our presence in Gaza today, which means that we are not making a comprehensive hostage deal, is contrary to the political and security interests of the State of Israel.”
The real history of these negotiations reveals a troubling truth: while President Biden has consistently blamed Hamas for the failure of ceasefire talks, his own failure to hold Netanyahu accountable has allowed the conflict to drag on. Biden is now trying to hide this failure by absolving Netanyahu of any blame, despite a mountain of evidence showing how he repeatedly sabotaged peace efforts. Recognizing this distortion is crucial, to inform the public in order to mount greater pressure where it’s needed the most to return all hostages and end Gaza’s apocalyptic suffering, and to prevent further manipulation from future administrations.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular