The Biden administration is striving for an ambitious diplomatic agreement in the upcoming months, encouraging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to embrace a fresh pledge to “Palestinian” statehood, in return for diplomatic relations with Riyadh, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing US and Saudi officials.
The White House is offering the Saudis a formal defense treaty, civilian nuclear plants, and a chance to boast that they got Israel to agree to a “Palestinian” State.
Like the matchmaker who tries for hours to persuade a yeshiva boy to marry Princess Margaret until the boy finally gives in, and the matchmaker sighs and says, Now comes the hard part, Biden is not any closer to pushing Prime Minister Netanyahu toward recognizing a “Palestinian” State than he was six months ago.
The Onion ran a fake story on April 4, headlined, “Biden: ‘Israel Has an Obligation Not To Harm My Reelection Chances.’” Without a doubt, delivering a state to the suffering “Palestinians” before November 5 could mean, besides a Nobel Prize for Peace, a greater success for Biden in fixing the Middle East than former President Trump’s Abraham Accords.
Of course, agreeing on any level to the establishment of a “Palestinian” State, either in Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria or with Gaza as well, would be political suicide for Netanyahu. His national-religious partners would walk out on him, and his own Likud members would likely rebel, too.
Last January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was trying to seduce Israel, saying, “You now have something you didn’t have before, and that is Arab countries and Muslim countries even beyond the region that are prepared to have a relationship with Israel,” and adding, “But you also have an absolute conviction by those countries, one that we share, that this has to include a pathway to a Palestinian state.”
Had the Biden folks been able to suspend their religious belief in peace among all the nations of the Middle East, and their imaginary peace-loving PA Arabs, they could have gone a long way toward establishing an Israeli-Saudi agreement without the “Palestinian” component.
The Saudis are eager to collaborate with the Israelis against Iran, as the Kingdom has proven by supporting the effort to thwart the Iranian attack on Israel last Saturday night. The Saudis also want the guarantee of American protection, and they want their own nuclear plants.
The US could push forward with a two-out-of-three deal, casting aside Ramallah’s aspirations of turning the murder of 1,200 Israelis into grounds for statehood.
It won’t.
