The Biden-Netanyahu understanding: engineering normalization with a bomb-laden peace with the Palestinians
What was proposed or revealed about US President Joe Biden’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday, Wednesday, in New York, confirmed what was expected, that the possibility of Saudi-Israeli normalization was the main item in discussions that were presented as “reconciliation,” after “reconciliation.” Long after that, Netanyahu became accepted as an official visitor in the White House “before the end of the year.”
The administration has not hidden for some time that its focus on achieving this possibility constitutes the “heart” of its current policy in the region, in addition to its objection to the internal policies of the Netanyahu government and the crisis it caused. Netanyahu, for his part, looks forward to achieving the agreement through Washington, as a stone that will kill more than one bird, both Palestinian and regional.
With the intersection of accounts, a state of tension that was bound to convergence, like other occasional tensions that occurred between Israel and previous American administrations, has ended. But the process that the administration is betting on is still, according to what is being said, dependent on two things: what is the “important concession” to the Palestinians that the White House is requesting from Netanyahu, and the extent of the latter’s willingness to translate it as a condition for passing this normalization, and secondly, Washington providing the “security guarantees” that Saudi Arabia is demanding in If it continues the normalization process.
Signs and explanations in this regard are vague at best, and are close to booby traps. The administration left the “waiver” demand ambiguous, and described it as the type that “keeps the path to negotiations open.” Netanyahu, as usual, was more evasive, as he expressed, on the one hand, that he did not object to “the Palestinian side’s participation in the process, but without having the right to veto,” and stressed, on the other hand, that normalization with the Kingdom would “achieve reconciliation with the Islamic world that leads to Real peace with the Palestinians.”
Both of them avoided referring to the two-state solution, and it was interpreted from two angles: taking into account Netanyahu’s governmental position at the present time, until the mixture matures, so that in the end an Israeli coalition government will be formed that will make an “important concession” to the Palestinians, and thus proceed with the deal “by January 2024.” According to the sources of the expert on Saudi affairs, Karen Elliott House, in her article in the Wall Street Journal on September 15. The second explanation, and perhaps the most likely in light of the Oslo experience and Israel’s evasions with American cover, is that an agreement was reached between Biden and Netanyahu to buy time to engineer a project that does not carry any “concession” to the Palestinians other than the camouflaged name of passing normalization. It has become believed that its announcement is a matter of “when” and not “of” if”.
This is because the “two-state solution” has become a reality on the ground, just as “Oslo” ended, and this is something that is attested to by the fait accompli. These words were repeated in periodic writings and warnings, without the American administrations budging from their complacency with the expansion of settlements, and what this led to in the encroachment of the national and religious right represented by the current Israeli government attacking the open annexation of lands in the West Bank. Indeed, the open racism it led to became a modern topic. There are quite a few parties in the American arena, including among the Jewish community, which is afraid of continuing to slide down this path governed by copying “apartheid” South Africa.
Earlier this week, the University of Maryland – College Park, adjacent to Washington, devoted a symposium on Palestinian human rights, in which the former President of the Republic of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and University Professor Kenneth Roth from Harvard participated, in which they discussed the Palestinian situation in the West Bank after a direct inspection.
The bottom line is that Israel has transformed, by occupying the Palestinian territories, into an “apartheid state,” and that these lands “have become like Swiss cheese,” dotted with settlements, such that “they are no longer suitable for the establishment of a state,” as Roth stressed, and this is an almost widespread belief among those in the know, followers, and fearful people like Biden. Adhering to the idea of two states, if only to keep it in circulation for fear of facing another South Africa.
But Biden realizes how difficult it will be for Congress to agree with him in approving, if he wanted it, a package of security guarantees for the Kingdom of the type available to European and some Asian allies, such as Japan and South Korea, which obliges the United States to directly defend any of these countries when exposed to an attack. However, such a possibility is not non-existent.
A number of congressmen plan to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman next October to discuss this matter, according to Saudi affairs expert Karen Elliott House, whose Saudi sources are reliable. It may have been given the green light to reveal this information, which suggests that the doors of Congress, despite the turbulent relations of most of it, especially the Democrats, with the Kingdom, are not completely closed regarding security guarantees, especially since Washington has an important interest in re-correcting relations with Riyadh, to limit Chinese expansion in As the Gulf states, and even as the administration’s orientations, rhetoric, and Chinese concerns suggest, circumstances have their rules.
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2023-09-21 09:55:52
