Biden pushing for Lebanon, Gaza ceasefires in last 74 days

The Biden administration is pushing Lebanon and Gaza ceasefires during its last 74 days in office, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Thursday in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s reelection to the White House.

“We will continue to pursue an end to the war in Gaza and into the war in Lebanon, a surge of humanitarian assistance, and that is our duty to pursue those policies right up until noon on January 20,” Miller said.

“We have no shortage of work to do over the next 74 days, and we are determined to make the most of the time left. As the president said today, let’s make every day count,” Miller stressed.

He was the first administration official to begin to talk about Biden’s last three months in office.

Blinken's remaining time in the region

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “has made clear that he intends to use his remaining time in office to make tangible progress on a number of critical issues,” Miller said. He listed the Indo-Pacific, China, Ukraine, and the Middle East.

This includes “bringing an end to the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza while improving the delivery of humanitarian assistance, securing the release of all hostages, and forgetting the further spread of the conflict,” Miller said.

Pundits have lost no time in jumping ahead to January 20 when Trump replaces Biden, and speculating as to what his policies would be and how they would already impact world affairs, including in the Middle East.

“There is one president at a time, and Joe Biden is the president,” Miller cautioned. “We will continue to pursue the policies that he has set forth when it comes to the Middle East.”

He was blunt about the continued stalemate in negotiations to secure the release of the 101 remaining hostages in Gaza, seven of whom are Israeli-US citizens.

CIA Director William Burns held high-level talks in Doha last week in an effort to jump-start the talks in the aftermath of the IDF killing last month of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who had been viewed as a stumbling block to a deal.

Hamas, however, continued to hold fast to its basic demands of a deal, an end to the Gaza war, and a full IDF withdrawal from the enclave.

Israel and the US had hoped to put forward a mini deal as a confidence-building measure, but Hamas has rejected that proposal.

The Biden administration has continued to talk with mediating countries Egypt and Qatar to look for an “appropriate formulation that could advance the ball,” Miller said.

“It’s been publicly reported that one of the proposals that we put forward with the other mediators, Hamas, was rejected last weekend,” Miller explained.

“That doesn’t mean that we’ll stop. We’re going to continue to try to push to get a ceasefire and find a way to end the war, but it takes the parties being willing to engage in those efforts,” he said.

The Biden administration is still pushing for a deal despite Hamas’s response, Miller said.

“We still believe that there’s a moment that we ought to capitalize on and we ought to seize, and we continue to look to try and see if there are other proposals” that both parties could agree to, he explained.

France has also been active in efforts for a ceasefire deal between the IDF and Hezbollah. French Foreign Minister Jean Noel Barrot was in Israel on Thursday to meet with Israeli officials.

He addressed the results of the US election this week, noting that Trump has been open about his desire to end wars in the Middle East.

“The conditions therefore seem to me to be ripe for moving, in the coming weeks, toward a diplomatic solution to the ongoing conflicts,” Barrot told reporters as he stood outside the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

“Force alone cannot guarantee the security of Israel, and even less that of the region that these wars have brought to the brink of the abyss. Military successes cannot replace a political perspective,” he said.

While in Israel on Thursday, Barrot said he met with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Israel Katz, who had been the foreign minister but was transitioning to the Defense Ministry.

“I came to discuss in a detailed and concrete manner” with Katz and Dermer “the parameters of an agreement allowing the cessation of hostilities and the full implementation of UNSC Resolution 1701,” he said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the result of the US election did not matter to his country, state media reported on Thursday, amid heightened tensions with Washington over its support for Iran’s arch-enemy, Israel.

“To us, it does not matter at all who has won the American election, because our country and system relies on its inner strength and [is] a great and honorable nation,” Pezeshkian said late on Wednesday, quoted by the state news agency IRNA. It was his first comment on Trump’s election victory.

“We will not be close-minded in developing our relations with other countries [while] we have made it our priority to develop relations with Islamic and neighboring countries,” Pezeshkian said.

Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi said that Hezbollah welcomes any effort to stop the war in Lebanon but does not pin hopes for a ceasefire on any particular US administration.

“It might be a change in the party who is in power, but when it comes to Israel, they have more or less the same policy,” Moussawi told Reuters. “We want to see actions, we want to see decisions taken.”