The Fire We Feed

There is a ceasefire in the Middle East, or so we are told. The United States brokered it — a negotiated halt to the war with Iran that was announced on April 8 with the usual pageantry of American diplomatic achievement. Flags, statements, the careful use of the word "historic." And yet, since that ceasefire took hold, Israeli forces have killed at least 880 Palestinians in Gaza. In April alone, Israel carried out 35 percent more strikes than in March. The Gaza Health Ministry reports a total now exceeding 72,000 dead since the war began.

One is tempted to ask: what, precisely, did we stop?

Benjamin Netanyahu is conducting a masterclass in using American credibility as a shield. His government is under pressure from a right-wing coalition whose political survival depends on continuing the conflict. Israel's next national election is expected in September; analysts and human rights officials now say plainly what diplomats whisper — that Netanyahu is deliberately stalling the peace process. The ceasefire framework exists. The second phase was announced in January. But the bombs have not stopped. In May, Israeli forces issued forced evacuation orders by phone — twelve documented cases in the central camps of Nuseirat, Bureij, and Maghazi — before demolishing residential blocks. These are not military operations. They are the systematic erasure of neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the United States calls this a win.

The conservative tradition worth defending is not, at its best, indifferent to the suffering of civilians. Nor is it naive about the way great powers get captured by smaller ones. Israel has legitimate security interests. Hamas bears genuine responsibility for the catastrophe it invited. Both things can be true. But a third thing is also true: the United States has become the indispensable enabler of a policy its ally has no intention of concluding, in service of an election its prime minister has no intention of losing. This is not an alliance — it is a dependency, running in both directions.

There is a concept familiar to anyone who has studied the moral logic of intervention: moral hazard. When you agree to absorb the costs of another party's decisions, you change the calculus of the decisions they make. Israel can stall because Washington will not impose a cost for stalling. Netanyahu can bomb Nuseirat because American diplomats will still show up at the next press conference and pronounce progress. We have bought our ally's war with our credibility, and he has priced that credibility accordingly.

What does a serious conservative foreign policy look like in a situation like this? It looks like conditionality. It looks like the willingness to say that American support is contingent on American interests — and that American interests include not being made to look impotent and complicit at the same time. The United States has more leverage over Israel than over almost any other country on earth. That leverage is being spent, right now, on nothing.

The ceasefire, if we insist on calling it that, is a document. The war is a fact. And the people of Gaza — who did not vote for Hamas, who were not consulted about the October 7th attack that triggered this catastrophe — are paying the price for a peace that was never meant to reach them.

Eight hundred and eighty dead since the peace was declared. The meter is still running.