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| In this image released by the Saudi Royal Palace, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman greets President Biden at the royal palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in July 2022. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace/AP) |
| On the face of it, President Biden’s grand vision for the Middle East makes plenty of sense. Israel, an American ally and beneficiary of many billions of dollars in U.S. military aid, would see its regional security fears quelled through an overt set of alliances with some of its Arab neighbors. Those Arab states, mostly ruled by Sunni monarchs, would reap the dividends of a closer relationship with a country known for its high-tech sector and cutting-edge defense industries. Iran, an antagonist for all these parties, would find its reach and ambitions checked by an interwoven thicket of foes. This vision is more or less the same concept that motivated former president Donald Trump when he ushered in the Abraham Accords — normalization agreements between Israel and two Arab monarchies (the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain) that were grandiosely cast as breakthroughs for regional peace. And the problem bedeviling Biden’s hopes for the Middle East remains the same one that Trump failed to address: The relationship between Israel and the Palestinians.
Trump and his allies tried to sweep the Palestinians — and their lack of a viable state and absence of the same rights as millions of Israelis in their midst — under the rug. The monarchs of the Gulf, jaded by years of a failed peace process and more animated by the threat of Iran, largely obliged. Biden came to office and opted to walk in Trump’s footsteps, making a few symbolic concessions to the Palestinians after Trump had doled out political gift after gift to the Israeli right. By summer 2023, talk of Saudi-Israeli normalization was all the buzz in the Middle East. Then came Oct. 7, when militant group Hamas struck southern Israel with an unprecedented, deadly rampage, triggering the hideous war that has ravaged Gaza and seen more than 34,000 Palestinians — many of them women and children — killed by Israeli forces. The conflict has smashed the uneasy status quo that existed in the region. The United States, along with its European and Arab partners all recognize that the moribund process to achieve a Palestinian state needs to be revived, even as they push for a more immediate cessation of hostilities and the release of the remaining hostages in Hamas captivity. But there is a yawning gap between Biden’s hopes and the realities on the ground. The United States still sees an Israeli-Saudi deal as the linchpin of a broader political agreement that would pave the way for Gaza’s reconstruction as well as the emergence of a Palestinian state. The shocking toll in Gaza has made it a nonstarter for Arab governments to engage the Israelis without prioritizing Palestinian concerns. And nobody of any consequence in Israeli politics — from the far-right allies of right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his chief rivals in the more moderate opposition — seems willing to consider the question of Palestinian self-determination or rights. “Israel is not paying attention … nor is it willing or politically equipped to make strategic decisions,” noted Haaretz columnist Alon Pinkas. “It’s all tactical. Israel is consumed by justifiable rage, frustration and an impasse on three fronts: in Gaza against Hamas; in Lebanon versus Hezbollah; and, in the outer circle, against Iran.” There’s justifiable anger on the part of Israel’s would-be Arab partners, too. “The challenge that we have is that we don’t have a partner in Israel now,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi told a special meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Sunday, gesturing to the continued Israeli rejection of any talk of Palestinian statehood. Safadi also indicated that the absence of a meaningful political solution would make it harder for Arab governments to participate in peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in Gaza. “Whoever goes there, if they are seen or perceived to be there to consolidate the misery that this war has created, then they will be seen as the enemy,” he said. “I think nobody would want to be part of that configuration.” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud echoed these concerns, suggesting that an Israeli commitment to a two-state solution would make any future peacekeeping mission in Gaza more “credible.” “If we all agree that the Palestinian state — giving the Palestinians their rights — is the solution that gives everybody what they need … then we should all decide whether to invest all our resources into making that happen,” he said.
The trouble is that the Israelis do not agree. On his seventh trip to the region since the outbreak of the war, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will go to Israel and once more confront a defiant Netanyahu. In Riyadh, Blinken acknowledged the crux of the problem: “I think it’s clear that in the absence of a real political horizon for Palestinians, it’s going to be much harder, if not impossible, to really have a coherent plan for Gaza itself.” Netanyahu’s plan for Gaza involves more war. On Tuesday, he shrugged off mounting domestic and international pressure against Israel’s looming full-scale attack on Rafah, the southern Gazan city that’s home to more than a million displaced Palestinians. “We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there — with or without a deal, in order to achieve the total victory,” Netanyahu said during a meeting in Jerusalem with representatives of hostages’ and victims’ families. In Riyadh, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, which is headquartered in the West Bank, said if Netanyahu gets his way, the “biggest catastrophe in the Palestinian people’s history would then happen.” He said the United States was “the only country able to prevent Israel from committing this crime.” Even in the event of an attack on Rafah, it’s unclear that Netanyahu would achieve his stated strategic goals. Experts believe that Hamas’s military capacities have been degraded, but hardly eliminated. Meanwhile, Gaza has been pulverized. “Instead of liquidating Hamas, the Israeli campaign has destroyed the Gaza Strip as a living space, in every sense. … This field of ruins, on which hatred can only prosper, will be fertile ground for a resurgence of armed Islamism,” wrote Jean-Pierre Filiu, a historian at Sciences Po Paris, pointing furthermore to the complicity of Gaza’s neighbors. “All the more so since Hamas will denounce Arab and international passivity to better exonerate itself from its direct responsibility in such a disaster.” | ||||||||