It is hardly necessary to mention that talks for US withdrawal from Iraq have just been announced.
It is also worth remembering that the last time a US administration
was effective in convincing Israel to do something related to peace was
in 1991, when the first Bush administration compelled Israel to attend
the Madrid peace conference.
Since then, all US administrations have had their chances to match
their claims with concrete results and almost all of them have failed.
President Bill Clinton helped secure the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994, but failed at Camp David in 2000. President George W Bush failed in Annapolis in 2008 and President Barack Obama failed in 2013-14. President Donald Trump even managed to worsen the prospects for peace with the Abraham Accords in 2020.
No lessons learned
The Biden administration will now face its turn to be judged by history. From recent leaks to the press, the prospects do not appear cheering.
Brett McGurk, the current White House’s point man for the region, is the main advocate of pushing for an Israeli-Saudi deal even before any attempt to solve the Palestinian issue. tises the establishment of Israel-Saudi
ties”.
This would occur in a 90-day timeline once active fighting in Gaza ends.
Washington's plan to solve the current crisis would almost be a
replica - nearly half a century later - of 1978's Camp David peace
accords
If this is the strategy, it is evident that McGurk, and the Biden administration, have learned no lessons from 7 October.
There is now a plausible belief that one of the reasons the Hamas
attack occurred is down to the approach adopted by the Trump
administration and the Abraham Accords.
Palestinians were thrown under the bus, ignored and marginalised, in
order to prioritise Israeli normalisation with other Arab countries.
Meanwhile, Israel, far before 7 October, had adopted draconian
policies in the West Bank, practically inciting and shielding extremist
settlers in their daily harassment of Palestinians, and all largely
unreported by the mainstream western media.
In a nutshell, Washington's plan to solve the current crisis would
almost be a replica - nearly half a century later - of 1978's Camp David
peace accords: “Let’s make peace between Israel and Egypt and we will
deal with the Palestinian question later.”
Except that this time, it would be Saudi Arabia and not Egypt in the scheme.
'Security-first doctrine'
This approach was wrong at the time and it would be wrong today,
because it is primarily motivated by maintaining Israel’s specific
interests in the control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It is known as the “security-first doctrine”, because it is based on
Israel’s and only Israel’s definition of its own security needs that
would allow, in due course, its transition to and acceptance of the
two-state solution. This has always been a fairytale, and the last three
decades of Israeli behaviour confirm it.
The US and Europe have shared the conviction that Israel, of its own
necessity, was committed to conserving a Jewish majority inside Israel
and that with time, considering the growing Palestinian population, it
would have been compelled to accept a Palestinian state to maintain such
a majority.
Instead, over the years, Israel's leaders have convinced themselves
that time was on their side and that the Palestinian question could be
managed through an incrementalist approach and the constant moving of
the goalposts. In the early 1990s, Israel asked to be officially
recognised by the Palestinians (and it was, in 1993). In the late 2000s,
it asked that such recognition should be as a Jewish state. Now the
threat of Hamas has to be addressed before any two-state solution.
Leaders in the US and the EU, when not deliberately complicit in such
a deceitful and misleading game, were outmanoeuvred and bamboozled by
the far cleverer Israeli game. And no Israeli leader has excelled in
such games more than Benjamin Netanyahu, who has effectively been in
power in the country for the last 15 years.
The compelling historical evidence shows that the persistent, brutal
denial of Palestinian rights through the occupation has been the primary
source of Israel’s insecurity, and the tragedy of 7 October is just its
latest, bloody, confirmation.
Since being sworn into office in January 2021, President Joe Biden
has disowned many of the controversial foreign policy decisions adopted
by his predecessor. But he has resolutely maintained the Abraham
Accords, with the aim to secure the deal's “cherry on the cake” - the
normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
McGurk has incessantly pursued this goal in the last three years. Any
effort to protect the Palestinians from the increasingly harsh measures
adopted by the Israeli government was put aside.
That the situation was reaching a boiling point was known to all the
upper echelons of Israel’s military and security establishment, but the
politicians in Tel Aviv and Washington remained, unforgivably, deaf and
blind.
7 October 2023, then, was largely a tragedy in waiting.
'Incrementalist' approach
No compelling rationale has been provided by the Biden administration
to explain why normalisation between Israel and other Arab states
should precede the recognition of Palestinian rights, except for the
die-hard and debunked “security-first doctrine”.
According to White House officials: “McGurk’s
plan would use the incentive of aid for reconstruction from Saudi
Arabia and possibly other wealthy Gulf countries like Qatar and the
United Arab Emirates to pressure both the Palestinians and the Israelis…
In this vision, Palestinian leaders would agree to a new government for
both Gaza and the occupied West Bank and to ratchet down their
criticisms of Israel, while Israel would accept limited influence in
Gaza.”
US National Security Council Coordinator Brett McGurk speaks
during the IISS Manama security conference, Bahrain, 18 November 2023
(Mazen Mahdi/AFP)
In such a plan, no political horizon is provided. It is the usual,
temporary, half-hearted and half-solution typical of the
“incrementalist” approach that the US and the EU have advocated for more
than three decades, and which have produced nothing but anger and
increasing violence.
It is time that the major players understood that Israeli-Palestinian
peace cannot be achieved through a step-by-step approach because this
method will always provide opportunities for the saboteurs to derail the
process.
Peace requires a Big Bang. This is the only sequence that might work.
It is not Israel’s security first, but the Palestinians' state first
Peace requires a Big Bang. It needs a Palestinian state according to
the established international parameters. Only then, after building a
positive atmosphere by finally providing justice to the Palestinians,
would it be possible to deal with the other crises.
This is the only sequence that might work. It is not Israel’s security first, but the Palestinians' state first.
US and Israeli logic now prioritises the uniting of American partners in the region who share a deep scepticism of Iran.
Not only will this be used by Israel to further delay a solution to
the Palestine problem, but it also misses a crucial point: Iran’s
animosity towards the US and Israel is largely due to both states'
coordinated policy targeting its economy, and deliberately denying the
rights of the Palestinian people.
Failed logic
The Abraham Accords’ core concept regarding the Palestinians has
always been that their acquiescence could be secured by offering them a
better economic life, but always within the cages where they were
confined, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
It did not work, and it could not work. McGurk, instead, allegedly
believes that a major effort to rebuild Gaza would make the Saudi court
more inclined to sign the deal with Israel and would also make the
Palestinians less inclined to protest and oppose such a move.
US perseverance in deploying such failed logic borders on the Albert
Einstein's famous definition of insanity, ie doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results.
Meanwhile, a recent opinion poll of
Saudis undertaken by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East
Policy found that 96 percent believed that Arab states should cut any
ties with Israel over its conduct in Gaza and that the kingdom should
remain attached to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which placed the
birth of a Palestinian state as a pre-condition for normalisation, and
not the other way around.
As to the other American objective - to “create” a new Palestinian
Authority that should also extend to Gaza - the US is once again
deluding itself. It's highly unlikely that Palestinians, in both Gaza
and the West Bank, would accept a top-down solution regarding their
leadership, especially if it came from those carrying out the carnage in
the Strip or those shielding them in the Security Council with their
veto.
The International Court of Justice has just issued its provisional orders
recognising the merit of the case of genocide submitted by South
Africa. As a consequence, it has asked Israel to adopt a set of measures
that, taken altogether, equate to a request for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The wall of impunity that the US has built around Israel is showing its first cracks.
Will Tel Aviv and Washington finally learn the lessons from history and change policy?
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.