Melanie Phillips: How America is now threatening its allies
This petulance and spite towards a historic agreement that has made a mockery of the Foggy Bottom consensus on Israel and the Palestinians tells us that the Biden administration’s attitude to the Middle East is based not on realism or pragmatism, but on emotion and ideology.Ruthie Blum: Is a bogus Iran deal upstaging the Abraham Accords?
It shows that the administration will deny hard facts in order to preserve fantasies, such as Palestinian “victimhood” and the illusory two-state solution, that define today’s progressive identity.
Israel itself is currently in the throes of unprecedented political convulsions. On Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year stint as prime minister is set to end when an improbable coalition of rightists, leftists, centrists and the Arab Ra’am Party is due to be sworn in as Israel’s government.
With no-one able to say with certainty that such a coalition will even endure, it’s impossible to predict what its policies will be. No one can say whether the rightists will abandon principle and allow themselves to be held hostage by the left; or whether the left will swallow right-wing policies to stay in power; or whether the Ra’am leader really will abandon his Islamist holy war against Israel and settle for the pragmatic priority of improving the lot of Israel’s Arab citizens.
Despite these unknowables, there are hopes in the progressive world that the very existence of such a coalition will soften western hostility to Israel and break down barriers with the Biden administration.
Yet whatever the coalition does, western hostility won’t dissipate because it is based on an irrational hatred that treats any concession Israel may make as merely a further sign of its innate perfidy.
As for the Biden administration, stuffed with officials who either hate or are indifferent to Israel and the Jewish people, the only Israeli policies that would break down such barriers are those that would leave Israel twisting in the genocidal wind.
In Northern Ireland the Republican Sinn Féin Party, which has a history of rank antisemitism, promotes the left-wing Israel demonisation agenda, while the Republic of Ireland is one of the most extreme anti-Israel countries in Europe. In stark contrast, Northern Ireland’s Protestants have long been strong supporters of Israel. They identify with the Israelis’ struggle against existential foes, global disdain and perfidious “friends.”
With the Biden administration’s perverse interference in their own affairs, further endangering their security while doing the same to the Israelis, these two causes are now joined at the hip against an America that has lost the geopolitical plot.
ISRAEL ISN’T the only country wary of the goings-on behind closed doors in Vienna. The Gulf states that openly allied themselves with Israel through the Abraham Accords – and other Mideast countries, like Saudi Arabia, tacitly doing so as part of a joint attempt to curb Iran’s pernicious agenda – are equally concerned.
Their worry is certainly justified, particularly in view of another disturbing development. US State Department staffers were sent inter-office e-mails a few months ago discouraging them from using the official title of the historic peace agreements brokered by former president Donald Trump between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
According to The Washington Free Beacon (freebeacon.com), which reviewed two such memos, no reason was given for the directive. When asked about it, a spokesman told the news site that the State Department “would refer to the Abraham Accords as such.”
Subsequently, an official speaking on background told the outlet, “This administration is not focused on what these agreements are called, but what they mean.”
Kissinger, Kerry, Kushner
A question facing any future historian will be this: was the “Deal of the Century,” with its implicit endorsement of Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, designed in advance as a throwaway, to facilitate the Abraham Accords? Whatever the answer, that is precisely the purpose it ultimately served. “We had been talking to both sides for 18 months,” said a senior American official, “but the annexation issue created the atmosphere which was conducive for getting a deal.”[6] If it was so designed in advance, then far from being a “dead-on-arrival” plan, it was a strategic feint worthy of a Kissinger. If not, it was a deft last-minute shift of gears.Caroline Glick: The great unravelling
Whatever the back story, however, the Abraham Accords and their sequels have introduced a new vector in the Middle East. The most creative and dynamic shorelines on the Mediterranean and the Gulf are now linked. They are the counter to the forty-year bond between Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which also links the Mediterranean and the Gulf. There is much potential in this fledgling alignment; how much of it will be realized depends on the ingenuity of Israelis and Gulf Arabs alike.
But it also depends on the attitude of the United States. Certainly, it has been hard for the old hands of the Democratic foreign policy establishment to concede that Kushner, wet behind the ears, achieved something that had eluded them. They should get over it. One doesn’t have to believe that Kushner (and Berkowitz) deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, though Harvard emeritus professor Alan Dershowitz has nominated them for one, but one must admit that they got this right.
Remember that Jimmy Carter didn’t toss out the Middle East achievements of Richard Nixon and Kissinger, but built them out into a new security architecture for the Middle East. President Biden should consider that precedent and think hard about how to capitalize on the achievements of Trump and Kushner. That need not mean abandoning the quest for a resolution of the Palestinian question. It need not mean locking the door to Iran forever. It does mean nurturing the cooperative spirit of the Abraham Accords. These US-brokered agreements give the United States a strategic edge. In the Middle East, America needs that more than ever.
Over the past decade, for the first time in its history, Israel developed a strong diplomatic posture in the region and worldwide. Israel developed strategic ties with Arab states, and the states of the eastern Mediterranean. It has built close ties with the EU's Visegrád Group of central European states Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as well as Austria and Italy. Israel upgraded its diplomatic and trade relations with the states of Africa and Central and South America, as well as with India, Japan and South Korea.
Unfortunately, it is likely that what Israel achieved through painstaking effort may be lost after the new governing coalition led by Yair Lapid takes power next week. This is the case for three reasons.
First, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the author of Israel's diplomatic triumphs. They are predicated on his foreign policy vision that diplomatic ties are built on common interests even more than ideology and that Israel has much to offer the nations of the world.
There are many things that divide the members of the incoming governing coalition. But they agree on one thing – they all hate Netanyahu. So, the first reason Israel may soon abandon its diplomatic achievement is because Lapid and most of his partners in the coalition want to erase Netanyahu's achievements.
The second reason Israel's diplomatic position is likely to soon crash is because Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz along with most of their partners do not share Netanyahu's diplomatic vision. Lapid is set to become foreign minister. Like most members of Israel's elite class, which includes the political left, the media, the senior brass of the security establishment and the senior leadership of the foreign and justice ministries, Lapid and Gantz believe Israel's diplomatic position is exclusively a function of its relations with the Beltway establishment. The closer Israel is to the American ruling class, the stronger it is internationally. The weaker Israel's relations with the American elite, the weaker its international posture.
The third reason Israel's decade of diplomatic achievements is likely to end in short order is because America-obsessed Lapid, Gantz and their ilk don't understand the importance or potential of Netanyahu has accomplished. They will not dedicate the necessary resources to maintain the ties he forged with the likes of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz or Brazil's President Javier Bolsonaro, because they don't value those ties. So the ties will wither.
Is #Israel a ‘canary in coal-mine’ for global war on terror? Should you care?
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In light of recent events, thoughts on Israel, the ICC, International Law, & global responsibility, implications & consequences.
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