On July 21, 2006, nine days into the 34-day Israeli war on Lebanon that killed 1,200 people, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opined that “an immediate ceasefire without political conditions does not make sense”.

In response to a journalist’s question at a press briefing, the secretary declared that she had “no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante”.

In addition to manoeuvring to delay a ceasefire, the US also expedited shipments of precision-guided bombs to Israel to assist in the mass slaughter.

Just two and a half years later, Rice was back agitating against a too-quick ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where over the course of 22 days in December 2008 and January 2009 Israel massacred some 1,400 Palestinians.

In this case, Rice claimed that the US was “working toward a ceasefire that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza”, Hamas’s largely ineffectual rockets clearly being a graver problem than the slaughter of 1,400 people.

Fast forward 15 years to Israel’s straight-up genocide in the Gaza Strip, which is undoubtedly a more effective means of eradicating the “status quo ante” – at least if we take “status quo ante” to mean Gaza and its inhabitants. With official fatalities now exceeding 40,000........

© Al Jazeera