Monday, July 31, 2023
From Ian:
JPost Editorial: Israel-Saudi normalization may be well worth the price
JPost Editorial: Israel-Saudi normalization may be well worth the price
According to Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who is considered close to Biden, among the elements involved in a Saudi-Israeli deal are an official Israeli promise not to annex the West Bank; Israeli commitments not to establish any more settlements, expand the boundaries of existing ones, or legalize illegal outposts; and the transfer of some Palestinian-populated territory in Area C of the West Bank to Palestinian Authority control.Can Netanyahu and Biden buy a ticket to ride on an Israeli-Saudi peace line?
According to Friedman, Riyadh is seeking a NATO-like mutual security treaty that would obligate the US to come to its defense if the kingdom is attacked; a civilian nuclear program monitored and backed by the US; and the ability to purchase more advanced weaponry from Washington such as missile defense systems that could be used by the Saudis to counter Iran’s missile arsenal.
In exchange, the US wants the Saudis to offer a large aid package to Palestinian institutions in the West Bank, significantly roll back their growing relationship with China, and help bring an end to the civil war in Yemen, according to Friedman, who stressed that such a deal could take months to negotiate and is still “a long shot, at best.”
On the domestic Israeli front, Friedman speculated that Netanyahu could be forced to abandon the far-right members in his cabinet who would oppose these terms and instead align himself with centrist political forces in the opposition.
Netanyahu, for his part, has come out strongly in favor of normalization with Saudi Arabia, calling it one of the top priorities of his government. In an interview with Sky News in early June, for example, Netanyahu called a Saudi-Israeli deal “a quantum leap forward” that would change history.
Describing Saudi Arabia as the most influential country both in the Arab and Muslim worlds, Netanyahu said, “It would fashion, I think, the possibility of ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. And I think that would also help us solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
Pursuing a deal with Saudi Arabia would allow the prime minister to focus on his stated policy agenda and his pledge to expand the Abraham Accords, rather than being bogged down by the debate over his government’s contentious judicial reform.
While Israel’s decision makers would need to seriously weigh the implications of any potential concessions, if normalization with Saudi Arabia means putting the controversial judicial reform on the back burner due to political and diplomatic constraints, that may be a price well worth paying.
Biden has little choice here if he is legacy shopping in the Middle East. Former US president Donald Trump touted his ability to make the “Deal of the Century” by finalizing a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, only to leave office having failed to do so.Saudi peace raises pressure for Israeli concessions to Palestinians
The Biden administration has mostly shelved his peace map, the international community never adopted it, and the Palestinians outright rejected it.
Time, however, has clarified the sustaining power of Trump’s footprint in the peace process through the Abraham Accords, which he brokered. The agreement of four Arab countries to normalize ties with Israel, despite the absence of Israeli-Palestinian peace, breathed life into Netanyahu’s long-held belief that Israel must first forge a relationship with Arab states before finalizing an arrangement with the Palestinians.
Now, it’s the only game in town. If Biden wants a win in the Middle East prior to the 2024 elections, he has to purchase a ticket on the train whose tracks lead to Riyadh, assuming he has congressional backing.
The possibility of a win here, particularly as Iran and China seek to strengthen their ties with Saudi Arabia, far outweighs any concerns about Israeli democracy, particularly when Saudi Arabia falls far behind the Jewish state on that score. It would also give Biden’s re-election campaign a boost, though his tenure in power is not necessarily dependent on it.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, can’t afford to walk away from a Saudi deal, which would for him be one of his crowning achievements and one which he has long sought.
Depending on the demands of such an agreement, however, he also might not be able to finalize the deal. This is particularly true if Netanyahu is asked to meet some of the gestures to the Palestinians laid out in Friedman’s article, such as promising never to apply sovereignty to West Bank settlements.
He can agree to an additional delay, but he would lose his coalition were he to make such a pledge.
The trick here will be to find a gesture to the Palestinians that Netanyahu can meet while keeping his coalition intact, given its many members who dismiss the idea of Palestinian statehood and want to annex all of Area C of the West Bank.
The possibility of a deal, therefore, appears so slim that Channel 11 on Sunday night floated the idea of a two-phased Israeli-Saudi process, in which the two countries would have low-level diplomatic ties without full-fledged normalization.
Or Netanyahu could switch gears. This is particularly true now that he has secured passage of legislation that narrows the court’s ability to tackle governmental corruption by eliminating the reasonableness clause.
Netanyahu could, Friedman speculated, use the possibility of a Saudi deal to swap out the more extreme elements of his coalition with more moderate ones.
Moderate opposition politicians opposed to joining Netanyahu might sing a different tune once an agreement is actually on the table.
It is nice to speculate about how a Saudi peace deal might also put a monkey wrench in Israel’s judicial reform process. But if Netanyahu is lucky, he won’t have to buy a ticket on this train. Washington will purchase one for him, and all he’ll have to do is go along for the ride.
As the US intensifies its efforts to bring about peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, pressure for Jerusalem to make concessions to the Palestinians has also grown in recent days.
Israeli-Saudi normalization has long been conditional on some kind of tangible progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front. As The Jerusalem Post has reported in recent months, Riyadh is looking for a greater concession than Jerusalem made in conjunction with the 2020 Abraham Accords, when Israel agreed to drop its plan to apply sovereignty to West Bank settlements and normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates.
The Saudis are looking for concrete steps toward Palestinian statehood. Merely a commitment not to annex settlements for the next four years would not suffice for the prominent Gulf state, Israel Hayom reported multiple diplomatic sources as saying on Monday.
The Biden administration has also been pushing Israel to do more for the Palestinians. This is in order to gain domestic support for its normalization push, an American diplomatic source said, confirming reporting on Kan.
The elements that the Saudis seek from the US in the framework of such a deal, such as weapons sales, a mutual defense treaty, a civilian nuclear program, and economic benefits, would be a tough sell to Democrats, who have spoken out on human rights issues in the kingdom, especially after the murder of US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Washington is also pushing for the deal to be completed by the end of 2023, in order to avoid a prolonged fight in Congress about the benefits for the Saudis during an election year.
