Even as Bashar al-Assad was scrambling to get out of Syria, Israel was mobilizing its military to take advantage of the power vacuum that Assad’s ouster had created. After five decades of a low-level conflict between the two countries, Israel saw an opportunity to change the calculus, and it seized it. As of Wednesday, Israel had struck Syria nearly 500 times. Their goal with these attacks…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the wake of the ceasefire deal struck between Israel and Lebanon, there has been a lot of speculation about a similar deal between Israel and Hamas to finally bring about an end to the genocide in Gaza. In many ways, the process we are seeing in revived talks in Cairo — where Qatar has agreed to resume its role as a mediator — are familiar. The terms under discussion have many…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Heritage Foundation got a lot of publicity during this election cycle for its infamous Project 2025. But that’s not the only project they intend to carry out now that Donald Trump is returning to the White House. Project Esther is a new proposal from Heritage that claims to lay out a plan to combat antisemitism in the United States. In fact, it aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the space of mere hours, Israel killed the lead Hamas ceasefire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh; assassinated one of the most senior figures in Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr; saw its citizens, including Knesset members and at least one government minister riot for their “right” to rape Palestinian prisoners; and announced that it had killed the head of Hamas’ Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on Jan. 18, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
In its haste to divert attention away from its complicity in what is now a legal charge against Israel of genocide in Gaza, the United States administration under Joe Biden is working hard to promote its plan for the so-called “day after.” That is the day when Israel’s work in Gaza is finally done, either because there is finally some global pressure to make it stop, or it achieves its genocidal goals.
As with virtually all of Biden’s foreign policy from the start of his administration, especially in the Middle East, the ideas generated by this “day after” thinking are rooted in American hubris and ignorance of the people they are dealing with, and are, therefore, doomed to failure.
This is the same failed policy that Biden has been chasing since his first day in office, a policy that has consistently moved farther away from reality, not closer.
One of Biden’s top advisers, Brett McGurk, has been promoting a plan that continues the futile ideas that the Biden administration was pushing before the events of October 7. McGurk is recommending that the United States tie funding for reconstruction in Gaza to a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia and that this include a “political horizon” toward a Palestinian state.
If all this sounds distressingly familiar, that’s because it is. This is the same failed policy that Biden has been chasing since his first day in office, a policy that has consistently moved farther away from reality, not closer. It is a notion that, as one U.S. official told the Huffington Post, is “delusionally optimistic.”
More than that, it is the very definition of insanity: repeatedly trying the same thing and expecting a different result. Yet, in this case, it might be that the plot’s success or failure is irrelevant. McGurk is reported to have told people that he is recommending that the plan, if accepted, be sold as a foreign policy triumph for Biden and that he do a victory tour throughout the Mideast to boost his election chances. That tour would take place in the months after an agreement on normalization was reached.
That simply substitutes one delusion for another. It not only ignores the fact that none of the parties, except possibly the Saudis, are in a position to accept such a deal, but also assumes that within a few months of its acceptance, the situation in both Gaza and the region would look so different that Biden could have his own “mission accomplished” moment, regardless of whether it might, like George W. Bush’s, turn out to be a tragic joke.
This isn’t just McGurk pushing his own policy idea; it clearly has Biden’s buy-in. At the World Economic Forum, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan made it clear that the normalization plan is the central piece in Biden’s thinking about the future of Palestine and Israel.
“We determined the best approach was to work towards a package deal that involved normalization between Israel and key Arab states, together with meaningful progress and a political horizon for the Palestinian people,” Sullivan told the audience at Davos.
Sullivan’s delusion would not last long.
Sullivan — who, just before October 7, said that the Middle East was “quieter than it has been in two decades” — once again demonstrated his and Biden’s complete obliviousness to conditions in the region. Even before Sullivan mentioned this plan, the Israeli Prime Minister had already told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he rejected it.
A report in the Times of Israel soon after Sullivan’s speech confirmed what anyone with any knowledge of Israel already knew: that Netanyahu would never accept a Palestinian state, least of all just a few months after launching his genocidal campaign against Gaza. It’s not just that the right flank in his government would bring down the government. The idea of a Palestinian state is doctrinally rejected by Netanyahu’s own Likud party, and the rest of his coalition.
Moreover, in the wake of October 7 and the non-stop drumbeat of anti-Palestinian hate flooding from Israeli news media, even the Israeli opposition that might officially stick to a two-state solution — such as Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party or Benny Gantz’s Blue and White faction, both of whom met with Blinken last week — are not going to endorse a Palestinian state now, or for some time after the destruction of Gaza ends.
Indeed, the opposition, including the National Unity Bloc that Gantz’s party is part of includes the New Hope Party, which is as fundamentally opposed to a Palestinian state as the Likud. There is no currently visible Israeli constituency significant enough to realistically hope for a two-state scenario.
The United States has a long history of misunderstanding the Mideast, but this level of ignorance and willful blindness far surpass anything we’ve seen before.
It should be a major cause for concern for any American, and, indeed, much of the world, that Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, and the rest of this administration are this ignorant of Israel, let alone of the Palestinians or the rest of the region.
The United States has a long history of misunderstanding the Mideast, but this level of ignorance and willful blindness far surpass anything we’ve seen before. Worse, the fact that Blinken already knew that Netanyahu had flatly rejected any hint of a Palestinian state, but that Sullivan somehow didn’t get the memo, reflects a level of incompetence that should terrify us all in these volatile times.
If the Biden administration is misreading Israel this badly, it should come as no surprise that they are doing even worse in the Arab world, including Palestine.
It is always dangerous when politicians start to believe their own propaganda. Sullivan demonstrated this when referring to Israeli-Saudi normalization, he said, “… it was our progress toward that goal that Hamas sought to destroy on October 7, when they came across the border into Israel, viciously massacred 1,200 people, took more than 200 hostages, and then turned and fled…”
The narrative Biden pushed out almost immediately after October 7 was that Hamas was “afraid of peace” — the peace that normalization would, he argued, bring to both Israelis and Palestinians. The narrative turns reality on its head.
Potential normalization very likely was a significant factor in Hamas’ decision to launch the October 7 attack. But it was not fear of peace that was behind that thinking. Rather, it was the fact that, diplomatically, Israeli-Saudi normalization is one of, if not the very last card the Palestinians have to play. For years, Israel and the U.S. have shoved Palestine out of sight and further from the center of Middle East diplomacy, with the Abraham Accords representing the most significant blow. Relations with the Saudis are the last big prize Israel wants to secure, and that gives the Palestinians some small degree of leverage, as the Saudis are, in contrast to the United Arab Emirates, for example, reluctant to be seen as abandoning the Palestinian cause.
The misreading of Palestine goes much deeper than that, however. McGurk’s plan envisions a “reformed” Palestinian Authority (PA) taking “control” of both the West Bank and Gaza. By “reformed,” they mean a PA that is no longer headed by Mahmoud Abbas, but by someone just as pliant and submissive, but whose stock with the Palestinian public has not yet been thoroughly depleted by routine humiliations by Washington and Israel.
Little else would change, other than perhaps an agreement by whomever the U.S. and Israel designate as Abbas 2.0 to halt payments to the families of Palestinians killed or imprisoned for violent resistance against Israel. The leadership would be imposed on the Palestinian people. Does this really sound like a plan the Palestinian public will accept, especially after the slaughter in Gaza?
The Saudis, of course, remain the one party that comes out ahead in all of this. They can afford to wait until conditions are ripe for normalization. They couldn’t care less about Biden’s electoral concerns nor Netanyahu’s legal and political crises. They have already made it clear that they will demand significant gifts from the United States in terms of military benefits and nuclear technology if they are to agree to normalization. The lack of discussion of this point in recent days strongly indicates that Riyadh is satisfied that, if the deal is closed, they will get much of what they’ve demanded.
The destruction of Gaza has reconfigured the Saudi demands only slightly. Given that a recent poll shows that an astounding 96% of Saudis believe that not only should their government refuse normalization with Israel, but the rest of the Arab world should cut any ties they have with Israel as well, the Saudi leadership made clearer demands of a commitment to a Palestinian state. Speaking at Davos, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan said that “regional peace means peace for Israel,” but “that can only happen with a Palestinian state.”
What the U.S. has failed to understand all along is that the Saudis have plenty of time. They have no need to rush normalization. It can come in five years, ten years, or more.
Blinken claims to have secured a promise from Netanyahu that he will not launch a full-scale attack against Lebanon, and, in yet another sign of his incompetence, he apparently took the Israeli premier at his word. Again, this should be a matter of grave concern to all of us. That kind of credulity in a leading American decision-maker puts the whole world at risk.
To date, more than 24,000 Palestinians have paid the ultimate price for Biden’s murderous bigotry and gross incompetence, characteristics he shares with the top embers of his team working in the Mideast, including Blinken, McGurk, and Sullivan, as they all repeatedly demonstrate. That figure is likely quite low, given the unknown number of people buried in the rubble in Gaza.
Israelis, too, have paid a terrible price for the racism of their country, the corrupt and murderous nature of their leadership, and American policy that indulges the worst of Israeli fears and bigotry while offering nothing to allow Palestinians their inalienable rights, which is the only way ever to realize security for all the people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Yemenis, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Syrians also continue to pay the price for the racism and incompetence of Joe Biden and his accomplices. These tragedies must end, and we in the United States must lead the demand for that change.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
A new Democratic political action committee (PAC) has arisen, dedicated to cultivating what it refers to as “moderate policies.” It stands against Republicans, as it supports only Democrats, but primarily, it aims to move the Democratic party to the right. It’s the latest iteration of conservative efforts to revive the classical conservatism that has been drowned by right-wing fanaticism, creating the so-called “Never-Trump Republicans” who don’t have a political home for the moment.
But it also holds serious dangers for Palestine advocacy.
We’ve already seen that while more progressive Democrats are far from certain to support Palestinian rights, theirs is the sector which has seen the most change from the lockstep Democratic support that has been the norm for so long. So, just by targeting that sector, even if the targeting had nothing to do with Palestine, Israel, or Zionism, there would be cause for concern for Palestine advocacy.
Moderate PAC, as it is called, focuses on economic issues, echoing old Republican talking points from the 1980s about fiscal responsibility and low taxes. Justice Democrats’ executive director, Alexandra Rojas, said of the new PAC, “The corporate-backed establishment will stop at nothing to prevent more nurses, bartenders, principals, community organizers and regular people from entering the Democratic Party in Congress. They would rather buy elections than let working-class progressives even run. They will do everything in their power to make themselves richer at the expense of robbing poor and working-class Americans.”
The issue, however, is much deeper than that. The new PAC, which intends to raise at least $20 million to target progressive candidates in the 2024 election, currently has only one major donor: billionaire Jeffrey Yass. That name may not be familiar to most Americans, but it’s one we need to get to know better. Yass, often referred to as the richest person in Pennsylvania, is the driving force behind funding for the Kohelet Forum, an organization that bears a great deal of responsibility for pushing Israeli policy to the far right, and whose network expands not only throughout Israel but also deep into the United States.
Kohelet’s agenda sounds a great deal like Moderate PAC’s. Kohelet’s web site says it “strives to secure Israel’s future as the nation-state of the Jewish people, to strengthen representative democracy, and to broaden individual liberty and free-market principles in Israel.” What that translates into in real politics is promoting religious zealotry, a weakened judiciary, extreme nationalism, and minimal social services. As we can see in one election after another, Kohelet has been remarkably effective in pushing its agenda over time.
Indeed, the current furor in Israel over the attempt to gut Israel’s courts was driven by Kohelet, borrowing from the American right-wing organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Like ALEC, Kohelet wrote the bills that are being put forth in the Knesset now and brought in legislators to champion it. Indeed, Kohelet has been a driving force behind the whole settlement enterprise.
Of course, Israel hardly needed Kohelet to disenfranchise Palestinians and deny their rights. But the power of their tactics, and especially the fact that few recognize that an unaccountable organization is responsible for so much policy is considerable.
That’s why their connection to right-wing support of Israel in the United States is so important. The head of Kohelet’s international law department, Eugene Kontorovich, is perhaps the leading figure in both writing laws and manipulating existing legislation to support Israel’s interests. As Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace described it, Kontorovich has worked “to effectively change U.S. laws so that we no longer view boycotts of Israel or settlements as a legitimate form of protest.”
Kontorovich claims that his work on anti-BDS legislation has nothing to do with his work for Kohelet, but the overlap of interests is obvious, and it is telling that his biography page at his primary place of employment does not mention his work with Kohelet. Like most of the efforts supporting Israel, Kohelet works best out of the light.
Yass’s funding of Kohelet makes him one of the most influential people in Israel, despite not being an Israeli citizen. In the U.S., Yass is a major figure in the background of Republican donations. He is a leading funder of Club for Growth, which supports the Trump base of the Republican party, including many who sought to overturn the 2020 election.
With Moderate PAC, Yass is turning toward the Democratic party for the first time, and while the PAC is only starting up, it is sure to attract other right-wing donors quickly. Ominously, the only consultant Moderate PAC named in its expenditure report for last year was Greg Schultz, former campaign manager for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. He moved aside for the general election, when the goal was to defeat the radical right, but Schultz was the architect of the Democratic strategy to erase the early advantages Bernie Sanders had made among Democratic voters, and he succeeded.
“It will be crucial that we make clear that this ‘Moderate PAC’ is Republican money trying to determine outcomes in Democratic primaries.”
As with AIPAC’s targeting of progressives in the 2022 midterms elections, Moderate PAC and other conservative PACs targeting the Democratic Party primaries will not need to engage with questions of Israel or even foreign policy more broadly. They can attack Democrats who are even moderately supportive of Palestinians without having to wrestle with the difficult questions Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, especially under the newest government, raises.
The Biden administration, which promised major Democratic donors that he would maintain the basics of the inequitable economic system in the United States and has largely kept that promise in his first two years in office, has also made it clear that it has no interest in anything that addresses Palestinian rights. His administration refuses to even affirm that Palestinians are living under occupation, let alone take any significant action on their behalf.
Yass might prefer that Republicans win the White House back, but he is hedging his bets with Moderate PAC, and what he hopes to produce among Democrats as far as Israel is concerned was on full display this week after Israel announced its plans for massive settlement expansion and so-called “legalization” of settlement outposts erected without the direct permission of the government.
After the usual, ineffectual statements of “ deep concern” from the United States and Europe, the Palestinians, working with the United Arab Emirates, drafted a UN Security Council resolution that would call on Israel to halt all settlement activity in occupied territory. The United States immediately went to the Palestinians and the UAE to try to convince them to either withdraw or significantly water down the resolution, thus far to no avail. The resolution is expected to come to vote in the Security Council possibly as soon as Monday.
The State Department called the resolution “ unhelpful,” a strong signal that the U.S. would veto it. Addressing the resolution, State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel equated the resolution with the “similarly” unhelpful Israeli decision to expand settlements.
This is what someone like Yass hopes to see from Democrats going forward. He may prefer Republicans, but he can read a political map and know that, whichever way Congress swings, Democrats have the advantage in popular votes for the White House. If Democrats are to be in control, Moderate PAC will, Yass likely hopes, make sure that on some issues—economic, as well as on Israel—they will not thwart his agenda. Two years of Biden would seem to suggest he’s right.
Moderate PAC will surely be trying to reinforce the thinking that led many progressives to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020: that a progressive, despite advocating policies that are overwhelmingly popular, would not be able to defeat Republicans, especially in so-called battleground states. Such debates will surely rage on, but there are certain issues where the absolute bankruptcy of conservative polices is evident. None more so than Palestine.
We’re already facing an uphill battle, to say the least, in Palestine advocacy. It will be crucial that we make clear that this “Moderate PAC” is Republican money trying to determine outcomes in Democratic primaries. AIPAC is doing the same thing. That has to be exposed, and Palestine advocates, as much, if not more, than anyone else, have everything at stake in exposing it.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
On January 3, Israel’s new National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of the fascist Jewish Power party visited the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, in an attempt to stir controversy. He succeeded.
The United Nations Security Council called an urgent meeting on Thursday to discuss this incident, after many countries voiced their outrage. Even the United States had some mild criticism of Israel over this. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said:
“The United States stands firmly for the preservation of the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem. We oppose any unilateral actions that undercut the historic status quo, they are unacceptable…We took note of the fact that Netanyahu’s governing platform calls for the preservation of the historic status quo with relation to the holy places. We expect him to follow through with that commitment… in word and in practice, that is what we will be watching for.”
The U.K., France, Turkey, Jordan, Russia and other countries also criticized Israel for this provocation. But perhaps most noteworthy was the fact that, joining China, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority in calling for the Security Council meeting was none other than the United Arab Emirates, Israel’s new BFF in the Persian Gulf.
Straining the Abraham Accords
This shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise. While the UAE has tried to embrace even this radically right wing government, their foreign minister also warned Benjamin Netanyahu back in September that a government this brazenly devoted to apartheid and overt, violent racism could make it difficult for the Emiratis to maintain their détente with Israel.
The UAE’s statement on Tuesday objecting to Ben Gvir’s action was strongly worded, stating that they “strongly condemned the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard.” it also hinted that the Emiratis were determined to hold on to the Abraham Accords if they could, stating that they “stressed the need to support all regional and international efforts to advance the Middle East Peace Process.”
But this was far from the only stress on the Accords. Oman, which many analysts had thought might be the next Arab state to establish normal relations with Israel, instead passed a new law criminalizing all contacts with Israel. This not only dashed hopes in Jerusalem and Washington that Oman would join the Abraham Accords, it signaled a sharp reversal in policy for the Gulf sultanate.
While Oman has never officially established normal relations with Israel, it became the first Gulf country to allow a visit from an Israeli prime minister when Yitzhak Rabin visited in 1994. It later hosted Shimon Peres and Netanyahu, the latter as recently as 2018. While Oman cut off communication with Israel in 2000 due to the second intifada, unofficial contacts continued.
Sometimes referred to as the Switzerland of the Middle East, Oman has long played the role of mediator, and, as a result, has worked to maintain lines of communications between adversaries in the Middle East. While it is close to its fellow Arab states in the Gulf, it also shares a crucial, and large, natural gas field with Iran. Last year, Iran and Oman agreed to jointly develop the field and this strengthened Oman’s strong desire to maintain good relations with Iran as well as with adversaries of the Islamic Republic. While that includes Israel, the value of Omani-Israeli relations to the sultanate pales before its relationship with both Iran and the Arab Gulf states.
While the vote in Muscat coincided with Ben Gvir’s appearance at the Temple Mount, it had been in the works for several weeks, prompted by a desire “to distinguish [Oman] from the UAE and Bahrain,” although Oman also recently declared its continued support for a two-state solution in Palestine.
Meanwhile, Morocco has been threatening to back off of its pledge to open an embassy in Israel if Israel does not recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The previous Israeli government walked a fine line, hinting at support for Morocco’s illegal occupation of Western Sahara, (which has been under Moroccan occupation since 1975) and maintaining the international consensus on the issue, stating that it supported Morocco’s “autonomy plan,” which has never been accepted by the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara.
The new government seems very likely to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, but the dispute demonstrates the pitfalls of the transactional nature of the Abraham Accords. Arab states must constantly weigh the benefits of normalization with Israel against the costs of betraying the Palestinians and thereby drawing the ire of their own populations and most of the Arab world.
All of this occurs in the wake of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s discussion with new Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen regarding how the U.S. might help expand the Accords. This seems to be another example of the detachment from reality that has characterized Blinken’s and Joe Biden’s approach to Palestine and Israel from the start of their administration.
The goal for both Israel and the United States has been to get Saudi Arabia to join the Accords, but despite grandiose statements from Israeli leaders, the Saudis remain aloof from American and Israeli efforts to draw them into the Accords.
The political winds are blowing against the idea of expanding the Accords. The ongoing protests in Iran continue to occupy the attention of the Islamic Republic’s leaders, and, contrary to the view of some western analysts, Iran does not have a history of trying to solve its domestic problems by launching attacks against other countries. That means that, at least for the moment, Iran is less of a concern for Gulf Arab states. That diminishes the incentive to expand cooperation with Israel.
With Ben Gvir wasting no time in aggravating the one issue — the Haram al Sharif/Temple Mount — that is not only a sore point for the Palestinians but raises personal and direct concerns for people throughout the Middle East, and with it becoming clear that the existence of normalization agreements does not deter the Israeli radicals from taking such actions, there is even less reason for Arab states to cooperate with Washington in normalizing relations with Israel. To the contrary, these increasingly arrogant and provocative actions by Israel don’t merely raise serious concerns for the UAE and other Abraham Accords participants; it also raises worries anew in Egypt and, especially, Jordan. Both countries have maintained long term peace accords with Israel, against the wishes of the vast majority of their citizens.
Biden will still have an opportunity to prevail upon his “good friend,” Netanyahu to rein in Ben Gvir and the other overt Kahanists in the Israeli government. But even if he’s willing to cooperate on that point, that’s not Netanyahu’s priority right now as he seeks to cripple the Israeli judiciary that is still trying to convict him for some of his crimes and harden Israel’s iron fist over the Palestinians.
The future of the Accords
In the end, this current crisis is likely to pass. Oman will continue to communicate with Israel clandestinely, and the UAE will try to get back to business as usual. But this new government, filled with characters, even beyond Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who delight in provoking violence and publicly expressing their racism, bigotry, and hate has made it clear it will continue doing what they love so much.
On only the fifth day of 2023, Israel killed its third Palestinian youth. In its cabinet meeting yesterday, options were discussed for punishing the Palestinians for having pushed the UN to bring their case to International Court of Justice, a resolution which all of their friends among the Arab dictators supported.
There will be no shortage of actions which will make it more difficult for the Abraham Accords to survive, let alone for them to expand. This demonstrates that the Accords are not related to peace, to improved relations in the region, or to stability. They can’t possibly have those goals in mind when they depend entirely on the Palestinians doing what they have never done: acquiescing to Israeli domination.
At the beginning of November, when Israel and the United States held elections within days of each other, it seemed clear that the pull in opposite directions embodied in the disappointing showing for the American far-right and the strong showing for their Israeli counterparts portended tension in the “unshakeable” alliance between the two countries. Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t even formed his government yet, but already we are beginning to see how that new government will make things difficult for the White House.
And the early indications from Joe Biden’s administration indicate a continuation of the weak responses that have characterized his policy toward Israel for decades.
The hand-wringing was frantic as the vote count in Israel was finalized and it became clear that, while Netanyahu’s Likud was once again going to be the largest party in the Knesset — as it had been in the previous six elections — the Religious Zionism bloc would be the second biggest in the incoming governing coalition. The two main parties in that coalition were led by Bezalel Smotrich, whose blatantly racist policies are reminiscent of the late radical Meir Kahane, a man so honestly racist he was banned from the Knesset; and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who openly espouses his admiration for and adherence to Kahane’s ideology.
The first concern Washington had was Smotrich’s ambition to be the Minister of Defense. Biden administration officials immediately told Netanyahu that this wasn’t going to work for them, and Netanyahu made it clear that he wouldn’t give Smotrich that post, prompting some faux outrage from the head of Religious Zionism. But Smotrich never really had a chance at the Defense portfolio. He has much less military experience than most Israelis, which made him a highly dubious choice even for his fellow right-wingers. And Netanyahu wanted to keep Defense for Likud anyway.
But it was a welcome opportunity to craft a performance for Washington, suggesting that Netanyahu would “listen to reason.” With that illusion cast, the provocative steps began to coalesce. Ben-Gvir got the Public Security ministry he wanted. That puts him in control of Israel’s police and border patrol, two entities that interact a great deal with Palestinians in 1948 Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. It also controls firearms licenses, and Israel’s International Homeland Security Forum, meaning Ben-Gvir will have an enormous influence all over the world on such matters as cybersecurity and so-called “counter-terrorism” procedures.
Another prominent feature that has emerged from the coalition talks is that Netanyahu has apparently conceded to Smotrich’s demand that he be given control of the so-called “Civil Administration,” which is the military regime that administers both the Palestinian areas (except for those meager powers doled out to the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo-designated Areas A and B) and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Religious Zionist platform calls for dismantling this administration and reverting authority to the relevant Israeli ministries and authorities, no different than in 1948 Israel.
As Shaqued Morag of Peace Now put it, “Smotrich sees Area C as Israeli territory and he is going to implement his vision of Jewish supremacy there, meaning he will allow settlements to take Palestinian land and do everything in his power to suppress the minority of Palestinians living in Area C, meaning the de facto annexation of the territory.”
Yet thus far, there has been little buzz from the Biden administration over this possibility, a stark contrast with the uproar over the question of Israeli annexation of West Bank that we witnessed just a few years ago. While Israel would not make a formal declaration of annexation if Smotrich has his way — at least, not immediately — de facto annexation would be the result.
The potential fault lines between even the meek Biden administration and Israel don’t stop with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Netanyahu remains under indictment, and there’s a good chance that if his trial is ever completed, he will face severe penalties, including prison time. Fortunately for him, much of Israel’s right wing, including some in the opposition, support a law that would severely curb the power of Israel’s judiciary, by allowing the government to bypass the court with a vote.
Netanyahu has a clear personal interest in such a law, but the ramifications would be far wider. The High Court of Justice is a tool of the Israeli apartheid regime, but part of the role it plays is to offer a small modicum of democracy and the rule of law to the state. It usually sides with the Israeli military when Palestinians bring cases before it (which is very difficult for Palestinians to do, as the first judicial line for them are military courts), but sometimes they do not, creating a veneer of fairness and angering the Israeli right. If the court becomes subordinate to the government, that veneer will disappear and will weaken even further the frequent arguments in support of Israel of its being the “only democracy in the Middle East” and its having such symmetry and “shared values” with the United States.
While these moves remain speculative — the government hasn’t been formed yet, and the potential backlash from Europe, the United Arab Emirates, and even the U.S. has yet to be measured with any certainty — there can be little doubt that they will serve to further damage the perception of Israel among liberal Americans, American Jews, and Democrats. But what will matter most will be the response of the Biden administration, particularly the reactions of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Biden himself.
Their track record, of course, suggests they will bend over backwards, even beyond the breaking point, to try to maintain business as usual with Israel. Recent events give us some clues about where Biden might want to go in facing Israeli actions that are obviously contrary to the wishes of the Democrats, and those clues don’t paint a promising picture.
The most high-profile event was the Justice Department deciding to open an investigation into the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Both the White House and State Department were very quick to declare that the decision to have the FBI open this investigation had nothing to do with them, and that they were unaware of it. This last is almost certainly untrue. DoJ had decided several days before the announcement was made to launch this investigation. It beggars belief that they made such a potentially explosive decision and sat on it for days without telling the White House or State Department. Still, the fact that Biden and Blinken probably knew about the decision but apparently did nothing to change it, despite their obvious discomfort with it, reflects the considerable political downturn Israel’s image has taken within the Democratic party.
They clearly did not want to be seen as interceding with DoJ on Israel’s behalf in this matter. In part, that has to do with Biden’s need for DoJ to be seen as politically independent as it pursues investigations around the corruption of his predecessor. But it also reflects the pressure that was brought by the Abu Akleh family, their supporters and advocates, and the response to that from leading Democrats in Congress, such as Senator Chris Van Hollen. Biden would have a hard time defending an intercession with DoJ to members of Congress regarding an investigation into the killing of an American citizen.
The investigation into Shireen’s death is not likely to go anywhere as Israel refuses to cooperate and Biden and Blinken have made it clear that they are not going to press Israel on this matter. On the contrary, they are trying to figure out how to work with this far-right Israeli coalition. They have already dropped a strong hint to Netanyahu about one familiar face they’d like to see come back, and it’s none other than former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer.
That would be the same Ron Dermer who snuck past the White House of Barack Obama and engineered the infamous 2015 address by Netanyahu to a joint session of Congress that attempted to undermine Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, the Iran nuclear deal. It’s the same Dermer who called that his “proudest moment.” It’s the same Dermer who defiantly accepted an award from the Center for Security Policy, an Islamophobic hate group and, in his defiance also stood up for extremist anti-Muslim figures including Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Maajid Nawaz, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Yet a Biden administration official told Axios, “We had our differences with Dermer, but we would be happy to work with him in the next government.”
In other areas, the U.S. is putting genuine pressure on Israel. Bowing to pressure from Washington, the outgoing Israeli government decided to tighten government oversight of their investments. It’s a move the Biden administration has been demanding for some time, as a response to increasing Israeli cooperation with China. Israel had been reluctant to give in to this demand as it sees China as a great source of potential investment in the coming years, but finally relented under pressure from the United States.
The decision shows that the United States is capable of moving Israel when it wants to. It simply doesn’t care enough about Palestinian rights to push Israel in that regard. Of course, the politics are very different. China is seen very negatively in the United States, and pro-Israel forces here are not eager to defend growing Israeli-Chinese cooperation anymore than they want to try to defend Israel’s relative lack of support for Ukraine. Still, if the Biden administration wanted to make an argument against Israel’s increasing legal discrimination against Palestinians or potentially annexing West Bank settlements, they could certainly do so within the bounds of political viability.
But the dedicated Zionists Biden and Blinken seem to have no intention of doing that. Instead, they will try to buy Palestinian acquiescence by promoting their Palestinian interlocutor for all occasions, Assistant Secretary of State Hady Amr, to the post of special representative for Palestinian affairs. It’s not an ambassador-level position, but Biden and Blinken hope that this will somehow soften the blow of their unwillingness or inability to deliver on their promises to the Palestinians of reopening the PLO office in Washington and the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem.
It won’t soften the blow. And as Israel takes bolder steps to consolidate its possession of West Bank land and dispossession of Palestinians, Palestinian anger and frustration will continue to grow, alongside increasing Israeli fascism. It’s an explosive combination into which Biden and Blinken are pouring gasoline. The coming explosion, which is entirely avoidable with the simple application of a modicum of justice, will be as tragic as it will be bloody.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.