Biden is just desperate for the war to end before the November election

This, in the White House’s view, is as good as it can get. Military action, Biden says, cannot assure “an enduring defeat of Hamas”. Instead, Israel should trust a “regional security network” to keep Hamas in line while our old friend the “international community” rebuilds Gaza “in a manner that does not allow Hamas to rearm”.

You could drive a bus of freed Palestinian terrorists through this argument. No Israeli prime minister could retain office after outsourcing Israel’s basic security to a third party.

The American-led order is collapsing as a defeated America leaves the region. American promises of support have never meant less than they do now.

The “international community” does not exist. The governments who say it does are the same Western governments that nodded and winked as UNRWA, the Red Cross and the entire NGO apparatus became willingly complicit with Hamas.

The Americans say the ceasefire proposal reflects offers from Israeli negotiators. Benjamin Netanyahu says that he empowered his negotiators, but also that the war will not end “until all of its goals are achieved, including the return of all our hostages and the elimination of Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities”.

Perhaps there’ll be another strategic pause in fighting — a hudna, as the Arabs say — and another exchange of hostages and prisoners. But something has to give.

The administration has more leverage over Israel than it does over Hamas. Forcing Netanyahu from office and imposing a more pliant Israeli leadership, and doing it before November, seems more feasible than breaking Hamas.

Netanyahu won’t play along. Last week, he accepted an invitation from Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Speaker of the Senate, to address a joint session of Congress. Only a few weeks ago, Schumer was calling for Netanyahu’s overthrow as an unfit leader. Now Schumer is forced by the Republican-controlled House, and public opinion, to invite Netanyahu to give a record-breaking fourth address to Congress — one more than Winston Churchill managed.

Churchill was an adroit builder of bridges with the Americans as Britain lost its imperial power. Netanyahu excels at the pettier manoeuvres of domestic partisanship — Israeli as well as American. Addressing Congress in the weeks before the elections would be a calculated insult to Joe Biden and the Democrats. Call it returning a favour.