Washington’s Ideological Stance Toppled the Negotiations, Serving as a Smokescreen to Obscure the Timing of Iran and the Resistance’s Response / Yemen Targets Two Ships in the Red Sea and Launches Dozens of Missiles at Military Bases in the Golan Heights

Albinaa’ Newspaper Headlines August 22, 2024

 The political editor wrote

U.S. President Joe Biden has ramped up communications with the head of the occupying government, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an effort to resolve the crisis sparked by Washington’s stance, which placed the responsibility of  the failure of the negotiations on Hamas. Both Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared Hamas responsible for derailing the negotiation process after Blinken adopted Netanyahu’s demands to revise Biden’s initiative, presenting it as an official U.S. proposal. Netanyahu accepted it, and Hamas was expected to follow suit.

Hamas’s decision to close the door to negotiations, following the U.S. stance that aligned with Netanyahu, has thwarted the American strategy, which was initially designed to extend negotiations for as long as possible and use the pretext of negotiation to obscure the timing of Iran and the resistance’s response to Israeli attacks on the capitals Beirut and Tehran, which resulted in the deaths of two senior leaders: Hamas’s Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh and senior resistance leader Fouad Shukr.

However, blind ideological rigidity took precedence over the pragmatic approach of the Biden administration and Secretary Blinken, according to informed sources. Blinken was expected to keep the negotiating channel open for as long as possible to pressure Iran and the resistance, under the pretext that avoiding a response would facilitate securing a negotiated settlement to end the Gaza war and enable aid to reach the besieged population.

Palestinian sources have indicated that reviving the negotiation process has become more complex following the American stance.

The likelihood of the resistance rejecting negotiations under U.S. mediation has increased. The resistance is contemplating appealing to the Security Council, which issued Resolution 2735 endorsing Biden’s initiative and accepted by the resistance, to assume control of the issue and establish an executive mechanism for its implementation, akin to the approach taken during the 2006 war on Lebanon, which concluded with Resolution 1701.

On the battlefronts, Gaza persists with its high-impact operations despite the massacres perpetrated by the occupying army against civilians. Hezbollah is firing dozens of rockets at the occupying army’s command posts in the Golan Heights, while Yemen is targeting two ships in the Red Sea.