Israel is not sending a delegation to Cairo for talks on a deal for a ceasefire and release of hostages from Gaza, an Israeli official told CNN Sunday.
And that’s the thing. It’s hard to think of a country with more political capital with the US. The UK, MAYBE. Israel has an enormous presence via both the evangelical bloc and the MID (probably more, but those are the major influences). When we went into this, the Biden admin told the state department that the word ‘ceasefire’ was verboten. Now you’ve got both the president and VP saying it. In one week we’ve gone from the president casually hinting that Israel’s going to work out a ceasefire to the VP making a speech that Israel must work out a ceasefire after it became clear that Nettanyahu wasn’t going to play ball. That’s a huge deal for a country with as much capital and goodwill with us as Israel has.
Because politicians seem to assume that the israeli lobby is the almighty god of politics. At one point they will need to realize that blindly obeying their will actually costs votes.
And that’s the thing. It’s hard to think of a country with more political capital with the US. The UK, MAYBE. Israel has an enormous presence via both the evangelical bloc and the MID (probably more, but those are the major influences). When we went into this, the Biden admin told the state department that the word ‘ceasefire’ was verboten. Now you’ve got both the president and VP saying it. In one week we’ve gone from the president casually hinting that Israel’s going to work out a ceasefire to the VP making a speech that Israel must work out a ceasefire after it became clear that Nettanyahu wasn’t going to play ball. That’s a huge deal for a country with as much capital and goodwill with us as Israel has.
Because politicians seem to assume that the israeli lobby is the almighty god of politics. At one point they will need to realize that blindly obeying their will actually costs votes.
Britain is already starting to find out