Saudi-Israel Normalization Is Not A Path To Ending The Violence in Palestine and Israel
A normalization agreement that comes without a viable, just, and lasting agreement for full Palestinian freedom and rights will only bring more disasters.
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Once again, the prospect of a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel is being floated as the path to a resolution of the various conflicts in the Middle East, most notably the question of Palestine. While the prospects of this actually coming about remain dim, there have been some developments that tell us quite a bit about where the players stand.
The biggest such development has been the Saudis’ change in their demands about Palestine. Initially, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) was demanding some gesture from Israel that the two-state solution remained in play, that it could still be sold as a reasonable objective. After Israel’s massive onslaught against the Gaza Strip, MBS raised the price tag, insisting that “irreversible steps” be taken toward a Palestinian state.
Now, the price has come back down again, and, as Reuters reported, “Saudi Arabia would be willing to accept a political commitment from Israel to create a Palestinian state, rather than anything more binding, in a bid to get a defense pact with Washington approved before the U.S. presidential election.”
According to the report, the Saudis want to get the deal done soon, as does Joe Biden. The reasons for each involve the November election, but they are different reasons. Neither seems very realistic, and both would be terrible outcomes for everyone involved, except possibly Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi view and why it’s wrong
Apparently, the Saudis—who, as I’ve often reported, very much want this deal but don’t have anything like the concerns about an election cycle that either the U.S. or Israel do, and thus can afford more patience—have concluded that this is the optimal time to strike their deal. That should send a shiver down the spine of every American.
Why? Because MBS’ eagerness can only mean one thing: that the Biden administration has agreed to grant the Saudis’ full list of demands for normalization with Israel, or something close to it.
Recall, those demands essentially encompassed three points:
1. A defense pact, similar in structure to the NATO alliance agreement that would commit the U.S., by treaty, to defend Saudi Arabia in case of attack.
2. Increased access to higher-level U.S. weapons
3. Support for a Saudi civilian nuclear program
Just a day before the October 7 attack on Israel, twenty Democratic senators expressed their concerns about these concessions. While not outright refusing to support such measures, and recognizing that, in their view, Saudi-Israeli normalization was a worthy goal that they would be willing to pay a certain price for, they clearly had many reservations.
The fact that the Saudis are pushing to conclude the deal soon in a way that they had not done before is a strong indication that the Biden administration has signaled to MBS, privately, that they are willing to grant the Saudi demands here. That is an incredibly dangerous decision.
It would commit the United States to defending Saudi Arabia in perpetuity. While perhaps, depending on wording, it would not commit us to aid in a Saudi war of aggression (not that we’ve been reluctant to do that -- just ask Yemen), it still carries major commitments to defend an ally that does quite a bit of provocative meddling in other countries. Even Israel does not have such a pact with us (again, it doesn’t seem to need one, but the option, and therefore the choice to abet genocide or other crimes and misadventures is ours).
The risks involved in developing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program are no less severe. U.S. laws strictly govern what kind of nuclear aid we can give to non-nuclear countries, but times change. Having nuclear science at hand allows for the ability to develop a wide range of knowledge and the ability to acquire materials needed for weapons programs. After all, let’s not forget that it was the United States that, for over two decades developed Iran’s nuclear program. Now our hawks are afraid of what Iran might do with it.
Having likely been assured by Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken that they will agree to these terms for normalization, the Saudis are now concerned that they will lose the opportunity to secure this self-defeating agreement after the election. According to the Reuters report, “The diplomatic push by Riyadh is driven by a desire to nail down a deal while the U.S. Democrats are still in the White House and control the Senate.”
That might make some real sense from Riyadh’s point of view. It’s still a long shot nearly on par with hitting the lottery, though. Senate Republicans will almost certainly refuse to give Biden this kind of win so close to the election, so Biden would need every Democratic vote. The twenty senators, all in the Democratic caucus, who signed the letter are a strong indication that he would have a tough time getting them all. If two side with all the Republicans, the effort is defeated.
One can understand the Saudi rush, though. The November election does not look good for Democrats. The Senate is very much in play. Right now, the Democrats have 48 seats and the Republicans 49, but all three Independents in the Senate caucus with the Democrats, giving them a 51-49 advantage.
But Joe Manchin (whose pretty close to a Republican in practice anyway) is not going to run again, and his seat is virtually certain to go to a Republican. One of the Independents, Kyrsten Sinema, won’t be running as a Democrat and has yet to announce whether she will run as an Independent. If she does, she likely won’t win, but her seat will be very much up for grabs. Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are also states that have Democratic seats that are more vulnerable than any seat Republicans are defending.
So even if Biden wins re-election, he will probably be stuck with a Senate that will do all it can to thwart him. But right now, his chances of re-election are not looking very good, as he trails in just about every battleground state, a point which is also a significant factor influencing the congressional races.
You might think that would please the Saudis, after the way Donald Trump kowtowed before them when he was president. But the reverse is true. The Saudis came to mistrust Trump after all his bluster about their friendship and he would be there for them. When Ansar Allah (the Houthis) hit Saudi oil fields with missiles in 2019, the Kingdom, naturally, expected action from the United States, as Trump had vowed. But when it came to an attack, the U.S. remained on the sidelines.
This caused the Saudis to mistrust the U.S. and spurred the already significant efforts by the Saudis to be able to take independent military action. The Saudi military is not as well organized and efficient as many, and they have, therefore relied on their pact with the U.S., struck in 1945 of oil for defense. After Trump, they were no longer satisfied with that agreement.
Moreover, Trump himself panders to his base, and that base is militantly isolationist and does not like American adventurism overseas, especially when it is not clearly for American interests. That will remain true even if Trump, in the horrifying event that he is elected again, does try to go all in on fulfilling the Saudi wish list, as Biden apparently has. A Republican Senate will certainly block any Biden effort, and cannot be relied on for a Trump one either.
All of this has prompted the Saudis to believe that now is the moment to try to get this deal done. Biden is desperate and is paying far more than a normalization deal is worth in terms of benefits for the United States, and those benefits are vastly outweighed by the risks. There are more significant benefits for Biden’s own re-election campaign, although that is supposed to be the sort of self-interested thinking that we voted Trump out for.
While the odds remain stacked against success for the Saudis, those odds are not as long as they might be. One should never underestimate the impact a U.S. President can have on members of his own party if he chooses to exercise it. And the party leadership is increasingly desperate as they’ve watched Biden hemorrhage support in recent months despite strong job numbers and, really, strong economic numbers across the board. They will press their more sensible colleagues to help Biden put the U.S. in a bad position in the Middle East in a desperate attempt to cling to power. The presidential race will also go a long way toward influencing the outcome of those at-risk Senate seats, so Democrats are prepared to make some terrible foreign policy decisions to fend off political calamity. Given the magnitude of the threat Trump represents, there is a case to be made here that they should, although this is exactly the kind of short-term and short-sighted thinking that has put our foreign policy into such a terrible state and made Democrats, in particular, look incompetent and foolish.
Yet even if Biden manages to win the uphill battle to nail down this agreement and also gets it through the Senate, there is a sure spoiler waiting in the wings.
Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu
Even at the Saudis’ lowered asking price, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained steadfast that there can be no hint of tolerating a Palestinian state. His stubbornness on the matter has to be understood outside of a political context and within a personal one.
An independent Palestinian state along the borders of Israeli territory as they existed before the 1967 war is no longer a real possibility. This was true even before October 7. Creating a viable Palestinian state would require either a complete rethinking of the separation approach (for example in a confederated system with two governments ruling citizens who could live anywhere on the land between the river and the sea, the very antithesis of the Rabin/Oslo approach of “us here, them there”); or it would mean uprooting many settlements in the West Bank. Considering the rending of Israeli society that accompanied their 2005 removal of settlements from Gaza and the fact that the Israeli right never stopped trying to get back there, the idea of doing that in the West Bank, which holds far more national, religious, and historical significance for Jews and especially the religious fanatics in the settler movement, is a political impossibility for Israel.
Today, the idea of a “demilitarized” Palestinian state is also being reinforced by those trying to revive the two-state, Oslo paradigm. The notion of a demilitarized Palestinian state has been around in one form or another since the Oslo process first began, and it has always been a dubious one. While the leadership of the PLO has acquiesced to the idea, it has never been put before the Palestinian public.
As such, it was impossible to know exactly what the feelings about this idea were even before recent events, especially since that was an aspect of the two-state vision that was never fully described by any side. Now it is hard to imagine that Palestinians would accept a state that agrees to sacrifice its ability to defend itself against a country sitting on its borders that had just perpetrated a genocide against it.
In any case, the hope that Netanyahu would accept even a theoretical Palestinian state is made of smoke and mirrors. If he agreed to even the possibility of a Palestinian state, his right flank would bolt the government, ending Netanyahu reign as prime minister.
Moreover, Netanyahu doesn’t want the attacks on Gaza to stop any time soon. One thing he knows is that when Israel’s onslaught against Gaza is finished, so is he. As slippery as he has been, holding onto this office for so many years, he is now the head of an unstable coalition, with few true political allies, a popularity rating so low it is nearly invisible, and is now the face of Israel’s defense failure on October 7.
When he is no longer prime minister, Netanyahu will have to finally face the criminal charges against him. He doesn’t care how many Palestinian civilians have to die to keep him in office. He has every reason to continue this “war” and no incentive at all to stop it. Add to that the fact that Netanyahu has based what little public appeal he has left on his steadfast opposition to a Palestinian state, and you have a prime minister in Israel who is not about to allow this deal with the Saudis to materialize.
At one time, Netanyahu dreamed of being the Israeli leader who brought about normal relations with Saudi Arabia. But even then, he always envisioned it as the fulfillment of his long-held contention that “peace” with the Arab world could be achieved without an agreement with the Palestinians. He seemed to be on his way to achieving that goal with the Abraham Accords, where the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and later, Morocco all abandoned the Palestinians for some minor trade benefits from Israel and more significant gifts from the United States.
But now, that incentive pales before the value of staying in office and out of jail. Moreover, Netanyahu knows that Biden, for all of his enthusiastic zeal for Israel, does not like him and sees him, correctly, as a political albatross. Trump, or any other Republican, would not have brought pressure on Netanyahu over the judicial overhaul as Biden did. Expanding fascism in Israel does not make it less palatable to modern Republicans, as it does to Democrats. Netanyahu will not be sorry to see Biden go next year, despite all that Biden has given him since October 7.
Nonetheless, it remains especially important for Americans to do all they can to oppose the Saudi demands. Saudi Arabia is still by far the most significant Arab country for Israel to establish normal relations with, and therefore one of the few diplomatic pieces of leverage the Palestinians have. Bartering it away for a short-term electoral gain, with nothing more than a vague Israeli promise that it might consider a Palestinian state at some point in the far-flung future is a recipe for more disasters like everything that has happened for the past four months.
I went into some detail about why the Saudi demands are so bad for the United States and the Palestinians as well just before October 7. The events of that day exposed the foolishness of trying to “manage” the occupation, or, as Biden has done since the first day of his administration, to ignore the Palestinians entirely. Now Biden has completely immersed himself in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This deal will not erase that memory, and it would be disastrous to complete a deal that robs the Palestinians of one of their only bits of leverage. It’s bad politics, and it is a policy that will lead to disaster, likely one that will be even worse Biden’s policies in the region already have done.
Thanks to Netanyahu’s selfish mule-headedness, this deal will almost certainly die before it’s born, even if it manages to get past the Senate, which isn’t all that likely. He is trying to appease Biden by sending his most trusted aide, Ron Dermer, to discuss the Saudi deal, but this is mere theatrics. Netanyahu wants no part of any deal that includes even a hint of a Palestinian state.
Still, it is never wise to leave such things to chance. Americans should mobilize right now against this disastrous plan. Such opposition will not only make it less likely that the scheme will come to fruition, but it will also send a desperately needed message to the Palestinians that there is still some segment of our body politic that hasn’t lost its mind or its compassion for the suffering we’ve been so shamefully a part of for so long…never as much as we are now.
News Roundup
As donors suspend critical funding to UNRWA, allegations against staff remain murky
by Jessica Le Masurier, France 24, https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240205-as-donors-suspend-critical-funding-to-unrwa-allegations-against-staff-remain-murky
Israel Initiates Land Registration in Armenian Quarter in Likely Bid to Aid Takeover of Strategic Plot of Land
Ir Amim, Planners for Planning Rights, Bimkon, https://mailchi.mp/ir-amim/israel-initiates-land-registration-in-armenian-quarter-in-likely-bid-to-aid-takeover-of-strategic-plot-of-land
CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’
by Chris McGreal, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/04/cnn-staff-pro-israel-bias
A New Low: The Israelis Advocating to Starve the People of Gaza
by Dahlia Scheindlin. Haaretz, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-30/ty-article/.premium/a-new-low-the-israelis-advocating-to-starve-the-people-of-gaza/0000018d-5b42-d0fc-a9bd-5f5fc0740000
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