Blinken Comes to Middle East to Clean Up the Mess Israel Has Made for the U.S. - I
"In his fourth Mideast visit since the war started, the U.S. is sending Blinken on his hardest mission yet – to salvage an image of victory out of Israel's destruction in Gaza. But the U.S. and Israel aren't on the same page on what that looks like."The United States "must deal with the disease and not with the symptom as it is doing now," advised Dr. Abdulaziz bin Othman bin Sager, chairman of the Gulf Research Center, in an article published on the Saudi website Asharq al-Awsat. "The region's disease is the failure to resolve the Palestinian issue in a just solution based on comprehensive peace. This solution was proposed by the Arab Peace Initiative."
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is slated to land in Israel on Monday evening, having already visited Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Following his visit to Israel, Blinken is slated to visit the West Bank and Egypt.
But he is in no need of this good advice. After all, he embarked on this intense trip at the behest of his boss, President Joe Biden, precisely for the purpose of trying to advance a two-state solution, as Biden called for in his Washington Post op-ed in November.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Doha, during his week-long trip aimed at calming tensions across the Middle East, Qatar, Sunday.Credit: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/ REUTERS
Yet before this wonderful dream, which would usher in world peace, can be realized, Blinken has to get through an obstacle course that currently looks impassable. Everywhere he has landed so far, he has heard an almost identical message – that Washington must pressure Israel to stop the war in the Gaza Strip. Not a temporary humanitarian pause for a hostage release deal, but a complete cease-fire followed by diplomatic negotiations.
Nevertheless, this course, on which the leaders of Turkey and the Arab states are united, raises two questions to which these leaders have no answers. First, negotiations with whom? And second, over what?
Blinken made it clear to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Hamas is out. The organization will have no role either in diplomatic negotiations or in whatever postwar arrangement is found for Gaza.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan meets with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday.Credit: MURAT CETINMUHURDAR/PPO/ REUTERS
But he did propose that Erdogan become a partner in backing a different Palestinian entity that would agree to take responsibility for running Gaza. According to a Turkish diplomatic source, Blinken demanded that Erdogan oust those Hamas officials still in Turkey and build closer ties with the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas. He even asked whether Turkey would be willing to be part of the coalition of states that will participate in Gaza's reconstruction after the war.
Erdogan, according to the Turkish source, asked whether Blinken has already obtained Israel's agreement to any Palestinian entity whatsoever running Gaza. And if not, what does Washington intend to do to force Israel to agree to Palestinian management of Gaza?
That's the same question Blinken heard from his Jordanian counterpart, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, and afterward from King Abdullah, who is currently the most worried Arab leader. Abdullah devoted a large portion of his conversation with Blinken to the situation in the West Bank and his fear that Israel seeks to transfer Palestinian residents of the territory to Jordan.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a visit to a World Food Program (WFP) regional warehouse in Amman, Jordan, Sunday.Credit: Evelyn Hockstein /AP
It's a safe bet that this question will also be the focus of Blinken's meetings with the leaders of Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Because even if these Arab leaders very much wanted – which they don't – to take part in running Gaza or invest in its reconstruction, until Israel has consented to a plan for how Gaza will be run, and as long as Washington either cannot or doesn't want to flex its muscles at Israel, there's nothing to talk about.
Given the lack of cooperation from Israel's government on the issue of Gaza's future management and the fact that the government has been demonstratively postponing this discussion, Washington can at best conduct a policy of putting out fires.
Via its friends in the region, it has sent warnings and even threats to Iran not to let the clashes between Hezbollah and Israel deteriorate into all-out war. It has used moderate force, mainly reactive, against Yemen's Houthis in the Red Sea. It has forced Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, though still far less than is needed to provide for the needs of two million displaced people. And it is demanding that Israel take energetic action against settlers who attack West Bank Palestinians.
U.S.S. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, transits the Strait of Hormuz, November.Credit: US NAVY/ REUTERS
The result is that the world's greatest power is acting like a local police force. It is dealing separately with each sector – Lebanon, Gaza, the Red Sea – instead of undertaking the strategic mission that it can and should fulfill. And this has already had two immediate and dangerous consequences.
The first is that it has made Israel feel there's a lack of urgency about planning for the postwar phase, or even staging a pretense of doing so. It has thereby distanced the day when Israel has to define what achieving the war's goals will actually consist of, as opposed to slogans like "destroying Hamas," "removing the security threat" to residents of southern and northern Israel or bringing the hostages home – a goal that currently seems farther away than ever.
In the view of the Arab states that are being asked to help implement the postwar solution, America is giving Israel a license to wage a permanent war that poses a growing threat to them. It has already exacted an enormous economic price, and that's on top of their fears of a civil uprising that could shake the stability of their regimes.
Smoke rises following an explosion in Central Gaza near the Israel-Gaza border, as seen from Israel, on Saturday.Credit: Amir Cohen/Reuters
With Washington unable to formulate even a tactical solution for the war in Gaza, it simultaneously tilts the scales in Iran's favor, which has become an essential axis country due to its control over Hezbollah's moves, the Shi'ite militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.
In the view of the region's countries, thanks to Iran's ability to establish a coalition of extension organizations that operate in coordination, it also dictates the policies of the countries in which these organizations operate. In contrast, the U.S. has yet to recruit a coalition to ensure freedom of shipping in the Red Sea. It doesn't have anywhere close to Iran's status in regard to dealing with the Lebanese front, and its presence in Iraq depends on the goodwill of a government tied in every fiber of its body to Iran.
In this contest of regional status, which impacts global status, Washington needs a victory image even more than Israel. To its disaster, the need to produce such an image has made it dependent on Israel's military and political moves. Blinken now has one central mission, to stave off the possibility that this dependence will result in direct military involvement in the regional theater, but his suitcase may not be filled with the goods needed to achieve this objective.