The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, arrived in Israel on Tuesday to ostensibly plead with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to accept a ceasefire in Gaza and end a widening regional war. Blinken and other US officials have made this appeal many times in recent months, only to be ignored by the Israeli premier, who has instead set about destroying swaths of Lebanon. On this visit, Blinken urged Netanyahu to use the recent killing of Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, in Gaza as an opening to declare victory and wind down Israel’s war.

Sinwar’s killing, in a surprise encounter with Israeli troops last week, should have created new momentum for a ceasefire agreement that would lead to a regional de-escalation and the release of dozens of hostages still being held by Hamas after its 7 October attack on Israel. But Joe Biden has already squandered this opportunity by sending Blinken to deliver a weak lecture to Netanyahu, and refusing to pressure Israel to accept a truce.

Netanyahu won’t “take the win” provided by Sinwar’s death because, for the past year, Biden has shown that he will rush to defend Israel from the consequences of its catastrophic war on Gaza, and its reckless actions across the region. Biden refuses to impose any costs on Netanyahu and his rightwing government. The US has provided $22bn in weapons and other military support, along with diplomatic cover at the UN security council, that enabled Israel to continue its onslaught in Gaza despite the harrowing death toll, and, more recently, to replicate those tactics in Lebanon.

Both Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, cheered Sinwar’s killing and urged Israel to use it as an opening to end the war. Biden called the Hamas leader “an insurmountable obstacle” to reaching a political settlement in Gaza. But Biden glossed over the fact that, for months, Netanyahu also blocked a ceasefire by backpedaling and adding new........

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