The Duran Podcast - Biden White House signals red lines to Netanyahu

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

Biden White House signals red lines to Netanyahu

Alexander, let's talk about the ceasefire in Gaza, a four, four to five days ceasefire, that the Biden White House, appears that the Biden White House worked this ceasefire out with Netanyahu, of which he's not getting along with, and the New York Times even reports that he's not getting along with Netanyahu, but anyway, you worked it out with Netanyahu, Egypt and Qatar. So what's the deal with this ceasefire? Well, the first thing to say is that the terms of this ceasefire change with every sort of news round. But basically, there's an exchange of hostages taking place.

Well, exchange of hostages. Let's say an exchange of prisoners. Hamas rounded up people, took them hostage on the 7th of October. and it's agreed to release some of them around 10 a day, apparently, is the commitment that they've made up to about 50 over this four-day ceasefire, and Israel in return is going to release a number of the people that it holds. And the figure I've seen is 150. But the more interesting things in some ways is that whilst this swap is taking place,

which is of course in humanitarian terms extremely important. There is also going to be this four-day humanitarian pause, which can be extended to 10 days, provided Hamas goes on releasing hostages during that time, which it will probably come under quite a lot of pressure to do. And the blockade on Gaza is going to be. be eased, or so we're supposed to expect, over the course of this, the period of this ceasefire. Now, the important thing to understand is that the Israelis are not happy.

They've been pushed by the Biden administration, and the Biden administration itself now is showing visible signs of pressure. and we've discussed in the past the way in which the diplomacy that the Biden administration undertook in the first week of this particular conflict was not wise at all. It probably had very, very big ambitions indeed. We've seen all these enormous military deployments to strike it for a potential strike on Iran. We saw lots of reports that the Biden administration of Blinken was talking about relocating for people from Gaza into Egypt and all of those things. This is in the first weeks or so.

Anyway, they have encountered such a massive diplomatic pushback about all of that. And there's also been such as so many tensions within the United States. that they're now in effect in retreat. And we've now had another very remarkable telephone conversation between Biden and the President of Egypt, President OCC. Now, this is all happening in the context of this humanitarian pause. And the telephone conversation was apparently set up with Biden phoning OCC to thank you.

him for Egypt's role in brokering this humanitarian pause. But it's clear that the discussion went veered off in completely different directions. Now, the thing to understand is that LCC spoke to Biden on the 22nd of November. On the 21st of November, El Cici attended a virtual summit meeting of the BRIC states. And not just the existing. brisk states, but the future brick states. So it was called by the South Africans. It was chaired by the South African president, Putin, Xi Jinping, MBS, Lula, Raizi of Iran, LCC himself, obviously, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and the President of the UAE, all personally participated. The only BRICS leader who didn't participate was Modi.

Modi was represented by his foreign minister, Jai Shankar. But then Modi had a follow-up meeting in which he was involved personally the following day, virtual meeting, with many of the same people, and that was done as a sort of virtual G20 summit. But anyway, these people all got together, and LCC was there. So LCC meets the BRICSLEC. The following day, he has this telephone call with Biden. And the American readout of the phone call with Biden is extremely unusual, because it contains these words.

It says that the United States will, under no circumstances permit. Note those words, under no circumstances permit a redrawing of Gaza's borders, a displacement of people from Gaza and the besiegment of Gaza. Now, when he talks in that way, when he says, under no circumstances permit, who is he not permitting? Well, it has to be Israel. So what Biden is now doing is he's telling an Egyptian, president, an Arab leader, that he is placing red lines telling the Israelis what from now on

the United States will under no circumstances allow them to do. Now that is a major shift. And of course, some of these things, the displacement of people from Gaza, the possible redrawing of the borders of Gaza, they've certainly been discussed. and perhaps considered in Israel. The besiegment of Gaza has been, well, the Egyptians would say, most people would perhaps say, a long-standing thing, but of course it's got much more intense over the last six weeks since the original Hamas attack on October the 7th. And in return for saying that the United States will not permit Israel to do all of these things, he, again, I'm taking this from the American read out, Biden is said to have also told LCC that

the United States will not allow, under no circumstances will allow Hamas to use Gaza as a sanctuary to attack Israel or to obstruct Middle East peace efforts. Now, that falls short of Israeli demands for Hamas' destruction and for Hamas to be uprooted completely from Gaza. So you can see that the Americans, Biden, having appeared to give Netanyahu right at the start a blank check, has now had to push, perhaps be, pushed all the way back. He's now drawing for Netanyahu what looked like red lights. And he's also starting to talk in a way that suggests that he's proposing or considering less than the complete destruction of Hamas. So quite a significant retreat. Now this is, of of course, Biden, how much weight do you place on any of this?

But it does give you some idea of the pressure he's under. The pressure that he's under domestically and internationally. And I think that's the reason for this change in stance from the Biden White House. The opening days of the war, they were thinking something else was going to happen. We were thinking perhaps even getting a wider war with Iran. something along those lines. Maybe they were thinking that the, that the Middle East would not react in the way it has the countries of the Middle East. Maybe they were thinking that the American public would be in much more support of Biden and the decisions that he took in the first days

of the war. And things didn't work out the way the Biden White House and the neocons were hoping they would work out. And it's an election cycle, election. season and Biden's polling numbers are are just about as bad as they can get. And internationally, the U.S. is becoming very isolated. And there's about a two, three week window until Bricks and the U.N., they take control of the Middle East region, the Middle East crisis in Israel. and the region in general, to be honest, the U.S. risks losing influence and control of the Middle East from this catastrophic diplomatic policy from the Biden White House. So he has no choice.

He has to walk things back and he has to put pressure on Netanyahu. The question is that Netanyahu accept? Well, this is a good question because will Netanyahu accept? because Netanyahu is under a whole set of entirely different pressures. And the Israelis have already, for example, basically hinted that if they got another security council resolution that they didn't like, they might even defy it. And of course, they've done that in the past. The United States has been there to protect them.

But this time, we see that the United States is having to bend under the diplomatic pressure, that it is coming under, or it's not the United States. The Biden administration is. So this is different. This is, this already makes this a different crisis from any other crisis like this that we have seen in the past. Now, you're absolutely correct about what you just said. The Biden administration, they didn't think this through.

Right at the beginning, they didn't think this through. They came to Israel, Biden came to Israel, Blinken went on his tours of the Middle East. They had entirely different sets of ideas. They raised expectations in Israel of unqualified support, whereas what they needed to do at that time was to explain to the Israelis, look, we're completely with you. We understand exactly how you feel, but we do have our own interests. And they may not be identical to yours in this situation. and you think need to think carefully about what you're going to do,

as we have to think carefully about what we are going to do. Netanyahu, by the way, who is an extremely experienced and sophisticated political operator, I think would not only have understood that, but I would not be surprised if it actually been expecting the Americans to come to him with that message. they didn't. That put him in the position where he had to go all out because how could he go back to his people in Israel and say, I can't go all out because, you know, even though the Americans are saying that I can. So he's been put in an awkward position. And of course, the United States has been put in an embarrassing position. And you're absolutely correct. The political initiative,

the diplomatic initiative is now slipping out of their control. So we see, firstly, that the BRICS countries are coming together. They're coming up with the plans. The BRICS countries are working increasingly with the Arab states and with the other states in the global south. The meeting that took place, this virtual summit meeting, the actual statements and documents that have come out of it, have not very interesting in themselves,

but we are getting reports, especially from the South African media. It was the South Africans who convened this summit, that one of the things that they're talking about, for example, is a breaks-backed peacekeeping force to go to Gaza. Now, if that happens, then, of course, that changes the political geography. It also means, and this is where this business about besiegment of Gaza,

must end. If there's a peacekeeping force there, very difficult to see how the Israelis can continue to control Gaza's borders to the extent that they have in the past. So we might start to see the grip that Israel has had over Gaza start to loosen. And of course, more importantly, in geopolitical terms, the overall position of the United States in the Middle East is deteriorating further with people like El Sisi, MBS, Raizi, all now working together and working as part of the bricks with the Russians, the Chinese, and of course the Indians too. So it's a completely different situation in the Middle East from what we have seen at any time before. Yeah, what kind of an impact would that have on Biden's re-election?

And the Democrats in general, if after, say, three weeks, we do see this crisis, this war in the Middle East move towards Bricks mediation. With, of course, the United Nations supporting Bricks. I think that's a key fact as well. That Bricks is working with the United Nations, or at least it seems like they're coordinating with the United Nations to try and get to a resolution. to this to this war where it does seem like the u.s is working more in isolation i mean that's that's the impression that that i'm getting what would that mean to to biden for the for the election i think i would imagine that would be a huge blow to the to the biden re-election and to the democrats in in general you are absolutely right and can i say this is also a change in the sense that since the

end of the Cold War, the United States has essentially controlled the UN machinery. And for the first time, again, in this crisis, it is starting to lose control of the UN's machinery. And that might be important, not just in this crisis, but in the long term, because, you know, you could start to see the bricks getting together. They are already starting to win over more states in the general Assembly and they're starting to win friends and win over people and the Secretary out as well. But where will this leave? Where will this ultimately, what will the ultimate consequences of this be on Biden's own election?

I think that what has happened, what is going to happen is we're going to have an outcome in which he has basically antagonised both sides of this experience. extremely sharp political divide in the United States. There are the traditional people, the people in the United States who traditionally support Israel. And there are huge numbers of them. I mean, they're still an important electoral bloc. They're an important electoral bloc within the Democratic Party's electorate. They are going to be angry. They're going to be, they're going to feel let down. they're going to see that this is going to end with what they will see as a compromise, which potentially is going to leave Hamas still in existence and still at present,

and perhaps to a great extent still running things in Gaza. So they're not going to be happy. At the same time, on the other side of the fence, you have all of those people who are protesting against what has been happening in Gaza, who in my opinion extend beyond, you know, Arab voters in Michigan. So that's not a place to ignore, but all sorts of other younger voters, people of that kind. They're probably going to feel that the administration is now implicated. it's shown that it is still supports Israel and they're not going to be happy with the administration

either so it's you they could have had they approached this in a different way right at the start at the outset they could have held on to their support with both of these electoral blocks whatever they do now, so it seems to me, they're going to disappoint and to some extent even antagonize both. It seems like it's not a winnable situation. Yeah. That's how it looks. They're going to have to make a choice.

They're going to have to make some very difficult choices. And it's probably not what they want heading it to 2024. And Biden's numbers reflect that. What about the peacekeeper issue? It's interesting that Blinken and the State Department, they floated out a peacekeeper idea, maybe like two weeks ago, two three weeks ago. But their peacekeeper idea seems to be a bit different than the bricks are talking about. Blinken was talking about a peacekeeping force consisting of U.S., UK, German, other European nations.

And maybe, he said, maybe some Arab states are going to. to try to get some Arab states on board. While the bricks, they have the Arab states there. Yeah. They're with them. So they're going to, I imagine the bricks. That's going to be the foundation of their, of their peacekeeping force if we get to to some sort of a peacekeeping contingent in Gaza.

These are two radically different ideas. I mean, the Blinken proposal, many Palestinians would have said was not a peacekeeping force at all. It was a new occupation force. He was there to take control of Gaza and to make sure that, you know, this kind of problem didn't arise again in the form that it did and basically run Gaza in, you know, Western interests. A peacekeeping force made up, put together by the BRICS countries, with apparently the South Africans offering to lead will be an entirely different thing completely, because they would be aiming to work with the local population. They would be seeking to lift the blockades.

And they would, in effect, make Gaza a much more viable entity politically and economically than it's been up to this point. So we're talking about chalk and cheese. It's completely different. And again, if it happens and it is ever deployed, and you know, I'm not, by the way, certain that it will be. I mean, we've got a long, long way to go before that happens. But if something like that does indeed happen, that that is also a major change in the political and geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. It would be an instance where, again, other states outside the collective West are taking the initiative not just in,

diplomacy but in peacekeeping as well. All right, we will end it there. Thedurran.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey Bichchut, Rock Finn, and Twitter X, and go to the Durant Shop. 20% off. Use the code. The Durant 20. Take care.