Gamble on wider war alarmingly foolish: China Daily editorial

That Hamas made its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, who is reportedly more resolute in continuing the hostilities with Israel, its new leader on Tuesday, prompted the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations to warn the world body of the potential ramifications of Sinwar's promotion, whom the latter claimed commanded the Oct 7 attack on Israel.

But in preparing for retaliation by Iran for its assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Teheran last Wednesday, and responding to escalated conflicts with both Hezbollah and Hamas on different fronts, Israel is reaping what it has sowed.

The Netanyahu government has apparently become determined to throw the helve after the hatchet after realizing that it cannot achieve any of its objectives in the Gaza conflict, including bringing the hostages home and eliminating Hamas from the Palestinian enclave. With so much having been lost, it appears that the Netanyahu government is convinced it has no avenues for a face-saving retreat to cease-fire negotiations, so it is stubbornly pressing ahead in an effort to entangle Iran directly into the mire of its making.

By provoking Teheran to throw itself into the front line, the Netanyahu government hopes to drag the United States into the fighting so as to realize its long-term objective of using the US to subdue Israel's largest strategic threat. If so, it calculates that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah would be a problem.

The assassination of Haniyeh happened shortly after Netanyahu's visit to Washington, where he met the leaders of both parties, and after 14 Palestinian factions reached a valuable consensus on reconciliation in Beijing, and Iran elected a new president, who is viewed as being pragmatic and open, while the global call for a two-state solution and the domestic voices urging an end to the Gaza war and a new election are becoming louder. Netanyahu just used the assassination as a desperate bid to kill multiple birds with one stone.

With the US accelerating its deployment of warplanes and battleships to the Middle East from all directions, US Central Command chief Michael Erik Kurilla's ongoing visit to Israel to complete preparations with the Israel Defense Forces to defend against an anticipated Iranian attack, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's urging on Tuesday that Hamas' new leader should agree to a Gaza cease-fire just expose the Biden administration's acquiescence with, if not endorsement of, Netanyahu's all-in scheme.

Giving the green light to the assassination of Haniyeh represents a worrying shift of the Biden administration's Middle East policy. A long-shot gamble on the part of the Biden administration to help give US Vice-President Kamala Harris a boost at home ahead of the US presidential election by changing the public's perception of passivity, which Netanyahu must have sensed during his US trip shortly after Biden's withdrawal from the presidential election.

That the US administration is giving the Netanyahu government unconditional support, despite its public urging of a more prudent course, has brought the Middle East situation to an unprecedentedly critical juncture. It was amid this worsening situation that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held telephone conversations with his Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts respectively on Tuesday, focusing on the situation in the Middle East.

Saying that China strongly condemns the assassination of Haniyeh, which was a violation of the basic principles of the UN Charter and infringed on Iran's sovereignty, Wang stressed that the key to preventing the situation from deteriorating and escalating is to achieve a comprehensive and permanent cease-fire in Gaza as soon as possible. He called on the international community to speak with a more unified voice and form a joint force in this regard.

It is good to see that Iran has exercised remarkable strategic restraint so far toward the hook baited by Netanyahu and Biden, who should be reminded that their countries will be frying in the oil they have provided in the long run if they do not put an end to their aggression.