Blinken Wants To Sell Us a Bridge

The so-called bridging proposal is not a serious effort to secure a ceasefire

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Blinken is selling a bridge to nowhere:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Israel has accepted a proposal to bridge gaps in ceasefire negotiations and the next step is for Hamas to accept ahead of further negotiations expected to take place later this week.

The so-called bridging proposal is not a serious effort to secure a ceasefire. The only gap that it closes is between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government, and it does this by including even more conditions from the Israeli side that Hamas won’t accept. Netanyahu agreed to the new proposal only because he knew that Hamas wouldn’t.

In fact, according to some Israeli officials, “Netanyahu’s hard lines are actually making a deal much harder to reach.” That’s no accident. It is obvious that the prime minister doesn’t want a real, lasting ceasefire, and he never has. The prime minister has every incentive to keep the war going, and he has been trying to expand the war with attacks in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Letting Netanyahu dictate the terms is a recipe for unending conflict.

The theater of Blinken’s bridge is meant to give Netanyahu political cover and to delay Iranian retaliation for the attack in Tehran. The administration keeps running the same play so that it can claim to be working to end the war while doing nothing to pressure the Israeli government to end it. Meanwhile, U.S. arms transfers continue without interruption while Washington pretends that Netanyahu isn’t the chief obstacle to peace.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

5 thoughts on “Blinken Wants To Sell Us a Bridge”

    1. You dare reject Hammurabi?

      Shamash gave him that law. Moses received commandments, but Hammurabi received his from Shamash.

  1. The article is correct except for this sentence:
    "Letting Netanyahu dictate the terms is a recipe for unending conflict."

    He's not dictating the terms, except in the completely irrelevant "negotiations." The neocons in Washington are dictating the terms of the conflict. Unending conflict is precisely the goal of both Washington and Israel. Or perhaps even more precisely, the goal is the destruction of the enemies of Washington and Israel and domination of the Middle East no matter how much conflict and destruction and death it takes.

    Here's how Bernhard at MoA referenced this on August 6:

    Why is this allowed to happen?

    Back in February Tarik Cyril Amar found this explanation.

    The Gaza Method

    The West’s evolving blueprint for controlling a poly-crisis world by mass-murdering and subjugating the poor, the rebellious, and those deemed “superfluous.”

    The non-paywalled full text is available here:
    https://x.com/TarikCyrilAmar/status/1818580601219293405

    The West is in decline and it has only one method left to delay it – brute force.

    All of the above means that the West is left with one option: the hardest of powers, if the dumbest, too: military force. And that is where the Gaza Genocide precedent fulfills its most important function as method-setting and method-“normalizing.” In a very concrete way, too: For since the 1990s (at the latest), Western militaries – with the US in the lead, obviously – have been thinking intensely about fighting in cities.

    You see where this has been going, right? To Gaza. Gaza is not the first but, for now, the worst instance of a doctrinal body of pseudo-technical and rationally vicious thought coming into practice: How to subdue the cities of the Global South (and the poor in general, make no mistake, Northerners), by all and any means. And for this type of very-near/present future warfare everywhere, humanitarian law as we know it – with all its immense flaws – is still too “soft,” too restraining. The same holds, of course, for our notions of crimes against humanity, including genocide.

    He concludes:

    Gaza is a method. A Western method. Fascist, Zionist, apartheid, sadistic Israel is a pioneer, a trailblazer into yet more evil to be done from those above to those below. That is why those above will shield Israel. They are shielding themselves and their future deeds.

    I was in doubt about this theory when I first read it. But by now I think that the elite are really planing like this. It is the only explanation that makes sense and it also consistent and fits with their increasing endorsement of pure fascism be it in Israel or in Ukraine.

    Except, if the Axis of Resistance has anything to say about it, "that ain't gonna happen."

  2. Blinken is a War Criminal, lying to Americans, as he pretends to be an American, in his service to War Criminal Netanyahu. The Zionist Agenda has always been STALL and KILL Palestinians, which Blinken like the GOOD Zionist Soldier, followed. Blinken is safe for now, because Members of Congress are in the same bed as he is. Please do NOT vote for the Rep/Dem/Zionist Party. Our Republic will only survive if we get REAL Americans, who believe in the Constitution and will uphold the Rule of Law. ARMING a Genocide is a War Crime, which is what Blinken, Biden, Congress is doing.

    1. Real Americans? Immigrants are the future in the US and quite possibly most of the West. They’re united in their rejection of the natives/previous-dominant-group.

      Old whites vote, but they also die of old age with time.

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