Jonathan Tobin: It wouldn’t have happened without Trump
Kushner persuaded Trump to work to hold the P.A. accountable for its support of terrorism. The Trump team also stood behind the president’s decisions to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to ignore the expert’s warnings that doing so would set the Middle East on fire.
When Kushner eventually unveiled the “Peace to Prosperity” plan earlier this year, it still offered the Palestinians an independent state and economic aid. But faced with the same kind of Palestinian rejectionism that had stumped previous negotiators, he focused on accomplishing the possible rather than the impossible.
Unlike Obama, who rejected the concerns of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states about his efforts to appease Iran, Trump and Kushner listened to them. Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and implemented sanctions aimed at forcing Tehran to negotiate an end to its nuclear program and support of terrorism.
The Arab states had already established under-the-table ties with Israel, which they now view as a strategic ally against Iran. But by establishing a rapport with America’s allies in the Gulf, including controversial Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who could have thwarted moves by his neighbors, Kushner helped persuade them to take the next step and work towards full diplomatic and economic ties.
Only American officials who didn’t play by the rules embraced by the foreign-policy establishment would have done any of that. And only a president like Trump, who distrusts “experts,” would have agreed to go along with such a strategy. And it was only their choice to reject the tactics of the past that brought representatives of the UAE and Bahrain to the White House with the possibility that other Arab nations will do the same.
If Biden defeats Trump, can his team build on this success?
Perhaps, though the problem is that anyone who would be picked by Biden is almost certainly a believer in establishment conventional wisdom. The next administration is likely to return to efforts to create a rapprochement with Iran and to resume futile efforts to pressure Israel to persuade the Palestinians to make a peace that they have no interest in establishing.
If next January marks the end of the era of foreign-policy amateurs running things in the White House, the experts and their fans in the media will breathe a sigh of relief. But it is precisely because Trump and his team were amateurs not educated to treat establishment myths as revealed truth that the celebration at the White House was made possible.
Jared Kushner speaking at the opening of Embassy Jerusalem on May 14, 2018. He got it exactly right! pic.twitter.com/3pVLVFjMbj
— David M. Friedman (@USAmbIsrael) September 17, 2020
Agreements indicate UAE and Bahrain are now less pro-Palestinian than Europe
It’s official: The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are now less pro-Palestinian than the Europeans.
Officials and analysts familiar with Jerusalem’s clandestine relations with several Arab states have long argued that they don’t really care so much about the Palestinians anymore. In public statements, however, all Arab governments until Tuesday stuck to their dogma and reiterated the need for a Palestinian state based on the 1967-lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a just solution to the refugee problem.
Remarkably, however, the agreements the State of Israel signed with the United Arab Emirates and with Bahrain do not echo such calls.
They do not refer to the Arab Peace Initiative or previous UN Security Council resolutions. There are no 1967-lines, no capital in East Jerusalem, no refugees. Even the concept of a “two-state solution” — which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed in the past, and which the US administration still supports — is entirely absent from the agreements, as is Israel’s West Bank settlement enterprise.
In the preamble of the “Treaty of Peace, Diplomatic Relations, and Full Normalization Between the United Arab Emirates and the State of Israel,” the two countries pledge to continue “their efforts to achieve a just, comprehensive, realistic and enduring solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi also commit to work together “to realize a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that meets the legitimate needs and aspirations of both people, and to advance comprehensive Middle East peace, stability and prosperity.”
Will Kosovo and Serbia Establish Embassies in Jerusalem? Not If the EU Has Its Way
It’s easy to miss all of the announcements coming out right now by countries normalizing relations with Israel. But even more intriguing was the announcement last week that Serbia and Kosovo planned to establish their embassies in Israel’s capital — much to the consternation of the European Union.
Kosovo would be the first Muslim-majority nation to do so, but that’s not the part that intrigues Israelis. Since announcing its independence from Serbia in 2008, Kosovo has shown an interest in establishing ties with the Jewish state, but Israel has always politely declined the relationship out of fear the Palestinians would copy Kosovo and unilaterally declare independence. The line of thought was always that if Israel recognized unilaterally independent Kosovo, it would need to recognize a unilaterally independent Palestine.
Oded Eran, Israel’s former ambassador to the European Union and currently a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, told JNS that he believes Israel was right to stay away from the conflicts in the Balkans.
“There is a sad record as to the situation of the Jews generally speaking in World War II, and there is a mixed record of behavior in what are today the states in the region,” he said. “Given the ethnic, political, territorial, irredentist complexities of the situation there, it was wise to stay away and avoid making judgments over who is right and wrong.”
Eran questioned the wisdom of the US administration to tie Serbia and Kosovo to Israel, and whether the two countries could even follow up on their promise to move their embassies to Jerusalem.
The European Union warned Serbia and Kosovo that they could undermine their EU membership hopes by moving their Israeli embassies to Jerusalem.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Arabs: Israel Is Not Our Enemy
"Times change, everything has changed, except for the Palestinian mood that rejects anything and everything." — Saudi writer Amal Abdel Aziz al-Hazany, Asharq al-Awsat, September 15, 2020.
"Palestinian leaders are the main cause for the suffering of their people. They have achieved nothing for the Palestinians. They only care about power and achieving personal and partisan gains at the expense of the Palestinian issue." — Emirati political analyst Issa bin Arabi Albuflasah, Al Bayan, September 12, 2020.
"We were told that Israel's slogan was [to expand] 'From the Euphrates to the Nile.' Iran, however, does not hide its expansionist ideological trend, which it is already practicing through its militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Turkey, on the other hand, is seeking to seize new sources of energy in Libya and has sights on Africa along the Red Sea. These developments prompted the moderate Arabs to start reconsidering previous their political positions." — Saudi writer Fahd al Degaither, Okaz, September 14, 2020.
"The Palestinian issue concerns the Arab peoples who want a solution, but the leaders benefit from the status quo. These leaders benefit from the problems and suffering of their people. There is no solution under corrupt leaderships." — Saudi writer Osama Yamani, Okaz, September 11, 2020.
Al-Shkiran also advised the Palestinians to hold their leaders accountable on two levels: "The first is political accountability: The reasons and causes of the continued rejection of all realistic deals that were offered to them since the beginning of the problem until today. Second: Opening the files of corruption. The Palestinian has the right to ask about the billions of dollars paid by the Gulf states for the Palestinian cause. All that money has disappeared." — Saudi writer and researcher Fahd al-Shkiran, Asharq Al-Awsat, September 16, 2020.