Last Updated on 06/09/2024 by Arun jain
Welcome back to foreign policyof SitRep. We are in countdown mode. There are just four days until the US House Foreign Affairs Committee releases the findings of its three-year investigation into US repatriations from Afghanistan, five days until the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and 18 days until the sitrap comes down in New York. For the UN General Assembly.
Well, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The Gaza Armistice deal Team Biden looks further afield than he suggests, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shakes it war time cabinetAnd one American the sailor has been arrested in Venezuela.
White House puzzling optimism over prospects for Gaza cease-fire deal
If you take US President Joe Biden’s administration at its word, the cease-fire deal and hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas has been on the one-yard line for nearly three months.
On May 31, Biden made the unusual move of announcing a detailed Israeli proposal to free Hamas hostages as well as secure a cease-fire in Gaza. The three-phase framework announced by Biden has served as the backbone of negotiations ever since. At the time, a senior official in the Biden administration described A deal described as “extremely close in almost everything,” the kind of agreement Hamas has indicated it would be willing to accept.
Since then, senior members of the Biden administration have reiterated the idea that a deal is very close.
4 July“I think the framework is in place now, and we have to work on the implementation steps,” said a senior Biden administration official.
July 11“’Optimist’ is always a difficult word to use in a sentence around this tragic conflict. But I think the signs are more positive today than they have been in recent weeks. Yes,” said National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan.
July 24“We will also be talking in depth about the developments in Gaza and the negotiations on the ceasefire and hostage release deal, which we believe is in the final stages and is reaching a point where we believe the deal can be closed. And it’s time to move to close that deal,” said a senior Biden administration official.
August 8, “The three of us and our teams have worked tirelessly for many months to create a framework agreement that is now on the table and only implementation details remain to be finalized,” the leaders of Egypt, Qatar and the United States said. joint statement.
15 August“We’ve already narrowed some of the gaps, and now the focus is on some more specific implementation and specific issues as they relate to the agreement,” said Vedant Patel, the State Department’s principal deputy spokesman.
August 16“We’re closer than we’ve ever been,” Biden said.
August 16, “Before the end of next week, we will reconvene at this level with the aim of concluding this,” said a senior administration official.
August 30“We’ve escalated the discussions to a point where they’re very serious,” national security adviser Jack Sullivan said.
August 31“We’re on the verge of an agreement,” Biden said.
“Taste close.” But in the months since the deal first announced by Biden in late May, more than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave, and polio has been detected in the Strip for the first time. A quarter of a century has passed, and the number of surviving hostages, most of whom are Israelis, has dwindled.
“This hope that maybe a deal was close, it was so authentic that it was jarring. It tasted close,” Rachel Goldberg-Paulin said in her eulogy for her son, Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Paulin, who was killed by Hamas. Six were among the hostages as Israeli soldiers closed in on their location.
Stumbled upon. Although the killing of the Israeli hostages over the weekend added a complicated new layer to the talks, a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday that a deal was 90 percent done, acknowledging that significant hurdles remain regarding the exchange of Palestinian prisoners for hostages. And Israel’s control of the Philadelphia Corridor, which runs between Gaza and Egypt—matters of substance, by all accounts.
At a press conference Monday night, Netanyahu made it clear that Israel won’t do Leave the Philadelphia Corridor — a route that runs about nine miles from Egypt into the Gaza Strip and is used to deliver not only aid, but also weapons and ammunition to Hamas — until Israeli officials are assured it is safe.
Negotiators faith That Netanyahu’s hemming and hawing is killing the talks. The Israeli side has offered to withdraw troops from the corridor as part of a phased ceasefire deal. Asked by reporters on Monday whether Netanyahu was doing enough to secure the hostage deal, Biden gave a clear answer: “No.”
Why optimism? US officials likely continue to entertain the deal because they see no other option to end the nightmare in Gaza for Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages. “They are in an investment trap. There is no alternative to the mechanism they have identified to de-escalate the war in Gaza,” said former Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller. He noted that the circumstances of the negotiations were highly unusual. Israel and Hamas do not communicate directly but through intermediaries in Qatar and Egypt.
There are also lingering questions about how motivated Hamas and Netanyahu are to secure a deal. “I don’t think there’s any question that the US and other mediators seem to want this deal more than Netanyahu and Hamas,” said Frank Lowenstein, a former US special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
But the Biden administration risks undermining its credibility by setting expectations for progress too high, Miller said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a negotiation or seen a negotiation where the premises and expectations for success have been communicated to the media over and over again and then there are no results,” he said.
Like Amy and Jack in Ukraine, a major cabinet reshuffle is underway informed last night Verkhovna Rada, the country’s parliament, approved Andrey Sibiha As the new foreign minister of Ukraine, in his place Dimitro Kulebawho resigned on Tuesday.
Sibiha was Andriy Yermak’s deputy in the presidential office until earlier this year and previously served as Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey. Kuleba’s next role was not immediately clear, but Ukrainian officials hinted that it could be an ambassadorial position in Africa or a position at a major European body such as NATO or the Council of Europe.
portfolio of Olha StefanishinaThe deputy prime minister for European integration is expected to fold into the justice ministry, a platform from which he will continue to lead accession negotiations with the European Union.
Oleksandr Kamishinwho resigned as Minister of Strategic Industries earlier this week, will be promoted to become Strategic Adviser in the Office of the President. Will take his old job Herman SmetaninThe 32-year-old head of Ukroboronprom, the Ukrainian state defense group.
Meanwhile, in France, President Emmanuel Macron has ended a two-month search for a new prime minister and has been named Former chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier for the job. Barnier must now form a government approved by France’s new parliament, where no party has an outright majority after elections this summer.
Back in Washington, Dr. Hilary Hearst The National Quantum Coordination Office now houses the Quantum Liaison within the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Amish Shah And David Manners-Weber Now a senior associate counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Herbie Ziskand Now the principal deputy communications director at the White House, and Zoe Hopkins-Ward Director of Research in the Communications Shop of the Office of the Vice President.
What should be on your radar, if it isn’t already.
US sailor arrested in Venezuela Venezuelan authorities arrested a US Navy sailor traveling in the country late last month, White House spokesman John Kirby said. said on Wednesday. “My understanding was that this individual was on some type of personal travel and not on official government business,” Kirby said. “We are obviously in contact, as appropriate, you think we will try with the Venezuelan authorities to get more knowledge and information about this.”
The arrests come a week after the United States seized President Nicolás Maduro’s plane to the Dominican Republic appears to have been defeated by opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez in an election earlier this summer in an effort to pile more pressure on the Venezuelan leader.
Double duty. In federal indictment Sealed Yesterday, US prosecutors alleged that Linda Sun, a former top aide to New York Governor Cathy Hochul, helped spy on official calls to China and even forged her boss’s signature in a scheme to advance Beijing’s interests.
Sun served in the administrations of Hochul and his predecessor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, before being fired in 2023. Federal prosecutors alleged that Sun blocked Taiwanese representatives from meeting with state officials—and bragged to his Chinese interlocutors about blocking engagements. She allegedly changed messages from top state officials on China and kept Beijing in the loop on New York state’s COVID-19 response.
In return, Surya received millions from China, enough to buy a $4.1 million house on Long Island, a condo in Hawaii and a brand new Ferrari. Accusation. Her husband was also charged with bank fraud and money laundering. It just is The latest in a series of high-profile foreign lobbying allegations by the Justice Department.
Washington assembles its cyber diplomats. The State Department is on track to meet its goal of having a trained cyber and digital officer in every US diplomatic mission by the end of this year, according to Nathaniel Fick, the inaugural US Ambassador for Cyberspace and Digital Policy. He told an audience at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, DC this week that about 216 State Department officials have so far completed their training to assume those positions. “And so you can do the math on the US mission globally, we’re going to hit that KPI by the end of the year,” Fick said, referring to the key performance indicator metrics he used frequently in his previous life as a technology. executive
Context: Slightly higher than the United States 270 diplomatic missions—including consulates, missions of international organizations, and some virtual embassies—so expect a few dozen more cyber diplomats in the coming months.
– Rishi Iyengar
snapshot
Thursday, September 5: The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation continues in Beijing until Friday.
Friday, September 6: Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida begins a two-day visit to South Korea, likely his last as prime minister.
Saturday, September 7: Presidential elections were held in Algeria.
Tuesday, September 10: The first presidential debate between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump takes place in Philadelphia.
Also on Tuesday, the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly is set to begin, and parliamentary elections are being held in Jordan.
“‘Is the Space Force a real thing?’ I get this question all the time.”
-Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, the top space force officer at the US Indo-Pacific Command, says This The Wall Street Journal That he’s still running into people who don’t know that the Pentagon added a sixth branch to the US military six years ago.
Serious inquiries only. The head of a hawkish Washington, DC, think tank asks for your help. “Please send me your workable ideas on how to overthrow the regime in Iran,” Tweeted Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is a top priority for me and FDD. I promise that the best possible things will be implemented.
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