- Gaza Crisis’ Ambiguity: Potential Catalyst for Regional Conflict
- Middle East Conflict: Biden or Netanyahu, Who Will Play the First Card?
- Netanyahu’s Objectives in Gaza: Strategy Shrouded in Secrecy
- Treachery in Middle East Politics: Netanyahu’s Signature Move
- U.S. Military Presence in Gaza: Biden’s Ambivalent Support for Israel
- Gaza’s Humanitarian Crisis: Netanyahu’s Controversial Policies
- Middle Eastern Political Upheaval: Netanyahu’s Actions Spur Regional Tension
- MBS’s Stance Against Israel: A New Dynamic in Middle East Politics
- Rising Tensions: The Inevitable Expansion of the Gaza War?
- Public Outcry in Arab Nations: A Response to Gaza Conflict
To establish whether we are looking at a regional conflict in the Middle East, we must ask who plays the first card of treachery – Biden or Netanyahu. Lying, cheating, and fake news will also play a big part in whether the war will pull in others from the sidelines.
It’s a question that keeps coming up, but no one, not even world leaders with their phalanxes of Middle East experts, can answer.
Will the Gaza crisis spill over and create a regional conflict between the West and Iran (and its proxies)? The answer is unclear as there are too many unknowns to explore, and given that Benjamin Netanyahu plays his cards very close to his chest, it’s unclear what his objectives are in Gaza. We can only be sure that whatever the official narrative is, it’s probably disingenuous, as Israel has a history of lying and faking. Even the recent bombing of a Baptist hospital, which shocked Western leaders so much that they woke up to what Israel’s leader could do and quickly got on planes to talk to him – Sunak, Scholz, and even Biden – was not only preceded by a warning by the IDF that it was about to be bombed but then followed by fake audio recordings which the IDF manufactured. Like the headless baby’s fake news story, the IDF line that Gaza bombed its hospital is nonsense.
The problem with regional conflict risk is that no one wants it except Bibi. A regional war with Iran would be the greatest dream he could ever hope to live out in the twilight period of his political career, with a eulogy already written for how he would like to be remembered. So, what could, or would he do to draw the Americans into a war with Iran, which means a war between the IDF and Hezbollah in Lebanon – plus both Hezbollah and Iranian forces in Syria? The focus is entirely on this relationship between the Biden administration and Netanyahu – the latter being the first world leader to welcome Biden into office in 2020 when the votes came in, a stab in the back to Trump, who did so much for him.
Treachery is part of Middle East politics and Bibi’s real signature. The art of it is to betray your friends without them even knowing it. Biden’s closest advisors must be panicking now after the move by the president to send warships plus an aircraft carrier to the Gaza coast – seen as a token of support to Netanyahu and the people of Israel, no doubt, plus a show of strength to Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon – while Netanyahu is proceeding in a land assault on the Gaza strip. But who will betray whom first? Despite all the supporting narrative that pours from the White House’s orifices, like blood flowing from a bombed Gaza hospital, it is very clear that Biden will not support Netanyahu in a regional war with Iran. Or at least if the US president has a choice in the matter. No American presidency ever has dared to take on Iran and, at every given opportunity, usually pulls back from any kind of war scenario as they know it’s not a vote winner and a one-way street, which is hard to do a U-turn in.
And when it comes to foreign policy in general, Biden lacks the elan of previous presidents. With this latest conflict, he is as lost as a kitten up a tree, both hopeless and helpless and not knowing how to turn. All he can do is hope that Israel will get in and get out of Gaza as quickly as possible with the minimum number of civilian casualties.
But therein lies the heart of the matter. It is not Hamas itself but the number of innocent Palestinians who are held hostage by Netanyahu as he slowly starves them of water, food, and medicine. This is Bibi’s ace card with Biden, as the former allows the latter to believe that he scored a major victory in getting the border crossing with Egypt open, allowing an aid convoy in.
Netanyahu might just carry out a slow and painful extermination of the Palestinians simply by allowing them to drop like flies. We may never know the real numbers as Western media is entirely controlled by the IDF anyway, and cell phone coverage is down—a strategy based on wiping out most of the inhabitants of Gaza should not be overlooked.
And so, with this in mind, analysts will then ask, does this spurn a political upheaval in the region against Israel and the West for letting Netanyahu carry out his holocaust of the Palestinians? This is already happening, no doubt spooking Biden and his advisors. He might be fretting about the American public watching this genocide take place, with America providing all the support for the perpetrators. But if the Abraham Accords are shot to pieces and the level of hostility against US soldiers, say in Iraq, escalates, most Americans will blame him outright, especially when the groundswell of anti-US resentment comes in the form of a new fight against Israel and the US from those who were prepared in the past to do deals with Israel. The normalization deals struck with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the UAE will quickly be annulled as inertia by Arab countries to show Israel that it has crossed a line.
Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. MBS has put himself on a peddle stool and really taken a stand against Israel’s present policy to annihilate Palestinians and will probably be a surreptitious backer of Hamas and any other groups that wish to fight alongside it if Israel doesn’t draw breath and ease back on its holocaust plan. This is at the heart of the question of whether a regional dimension to the war in Gaza is inevitable: Joe Biden’s ability to be manipulated by Netanyahu, possibly even through a false flag attack against the US warships that he might manufacture, which could be blamed on Hezbollah versus a new anger from Arab leaders who, admittedly, are using the Gaza card as a political tool. Countries like the wealthy Qatar, KSA, and Turkey are an unlikely alliance, may well find they have more in common than they originally thought, and join Iran in a new strategy to rise from the ashes of Gaza. And so, a regional expansion of the war, either in the short term with Hezbollah, who will not wait for months to pass to see the entire Gaza population wiped out, or in a longer one with regional superpowers, is inevitable.
The demonstrations in Morocco, Libya, and Tunisia – with numbers we haven’t seen in the past – are matched only by the fever pitch of most Lebanese who fear war is coming again.
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