November 01, 2024
By Nasser Kandil
• The brief surge of optimism about a possible ceasefire agreement on the Lebanese front quickly faded after U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, accompanied by Brett McGurk, senior advisor to President Joe Biden, concluded his meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The American delegation opted to return to Washington rather than proceeding to Beirut, as originally planned – an indication that their talks with Netanyahu yielded nothing to initiate a negotiation process.
• The Israeli government has acknowledged the mounting toll the resistance is exacting through its ground operations, which have yielded repeated failures for the occupation forces. The occupation realises it must lower its political and negotiating demands, but the adjustments it is willing to make still fall short of respecting Lebanese sovereignty. An Israeli official reportedly told Axios, “We want freedom of action in Lebanon similar to what we have on the Syrian front, with U.S. cover and acceptance by the Lebanese government to end the war”.
• Meanwhile, the war rages on. The occupation has scaled back its ground operations, hoping to rely on its firepower to achieve destruction and death in a bid to create leverage that might force the resistance into a more favourable negotiating position. But it remains entangled on the ground, unable to guarantee that the resistance won’t exploit any retreat from its ground operations to carry out raids on Israeli forces stationed along the border settlements. Moreover, Israel is acutely aware that the resistance has yet to reveal its full firepower or demonstrate its capacity to establish a balance of deterrence between Lebanon and the occupied territories.
• The battlefield has already driven the negotiation process forward by compelling Israel to start climbing down from its rigid stance, yet it has not descended far enough to make real negotiation, and thus a ceasefire, feasible.
• More action on the ground – not more political posturing – is the only way forward. The resistance is creating new facts on the ground to eventually reopen the door to effective negotiations. Until then, Hochstein returns to Washington empty-handed.
