US President Joe Biden is coming to Israel, after all .
He is set to be in the Middle East from July 13 to 16. Following the
earlier postponement of his visit, this week’s news trajectory told the
tale:
On Sunday, June 12, “a fuming” Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman messaged Washington that he was poised to downgrade ties with Israel; Biden’s visit had better sort Israel out.
Israeli PM Naftali Bennett's coalition government is on the brink of collapse
On Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett conceded that his toppling government might be about to collapse.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid expressed
his view that Biden will come even if Israel’s coalition collapses. The
Israel-US relationship surpasses politics, was his view.
News media reported that the president’s trip will include visits to the PA and to Saudi Arabia.
In the face of all this, The Jerusalem Post
nonetheless opined that there was no need to overstate the relevance of
the first leg of the trip. “Biden’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian
Authority is just a sideshow. Saudi Arabia is the main event…”
Hardly. Israel is no sideshow. Biden’s visit is no stopover. It is without question tightly tied to what for decades has been the main event on the global agenda for the Middle East: Creating Palestine.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is in the driver's seat. Biden desperately needs his oil
This is not to suggest that the visit to Saudi Arabia is just window
dressing. The unparalleled (and for Americans, frightening) $5.00 per
gallon of gas charge at the pump thanks to the Russian-Ukrainian war;
Iran’s mockery of the failed US-led effort to prevent it crossing the
nuclear threshold, which has heightened the need to bring Saudi Arabia
into the Abraham Accords ;
and not forgetting America’s desire to restore something of its
depleted influence in the Middle East — all this is hardly
insignificant.
But the road to Riyadh passes through Jerusalem. The currency for
securing Saudi Arabia’s cooperation and participation is not only the
prospect of improved US-Saudi relations with all the goodies that
brings; it is the visibly intensified American push for the creation of a
Palestinian state in “the West Bank” with “East Jerusalem” as its
capital. Or, more accurately — the establishment of a Muslim-Arab
country in Israel’s biblical and ancestral heartland — Samaria and Judea
— with half of Israel’s united capital appropriated as well.
This could quite practicably play out too by running interference in
Israeli politics – bolstering Bennett in the eyes of the electorate, or
beating back Bibi (Netanyahu).
Which is why Washington is already turning the screws on Bennett’s coalition.
Reported the Times of Israel Wednesday, quoting Israeli and Palestinian Arab officials:
“The US administration has been pushing Israel to avoid
taking unilateral steps that would further damage ties with the
Palestinians in the lead-up to President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel and
the West Bank next month … The US is particularly concerned about an Israeli effort to advance what critics call a ‘doomsday’ settlement construction plan in the E1 area of [Judea].”
A visiting official from Washington urged Israel to scrap the plan
but was reportedly told that, given the fragility of the Bennett
government, which includes E1 supporters who are on the verge of
bolting, this was not immediately doable.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has the blood of innocent Israeli civilians killed by terrorists on his hands
Nor, as noted above, has the PA been caught napping. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas
(aka the terrorist in a tie) clamoured all through Ramadan at the IDF’s
response to a wave of Arab terrorism that left murdered Jews scattered
in its wake, and he is now screaming for Washington
to renew relations with the blood-soaked Palestine Liberation
Organisation (which Abbas also heads) and to re-open the US consulate
for the Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem.
Delisting the PLO — whose founding charter remains unchanged despite
its commitment under the Oslo Agreement to erase its Israel-hating
clauses — would be akin to approving its ongoing goal of Israel’s
destruction. Re-opening that consular office would constitute a flagrant
slap-down of Israel’s claim to Jerusalem — the whole city — as its
capital and be in breach of international law. It would, in effect, reverse Donald Trump’s recognition of all Jerusalem as Israel’s. Nonetheless, indications are that Biden plans to go ahead with this.
Regarding the Abraham Accords themselves: As promising as a
“people-to-people peace” appears, with words of gracious goodwill
passing between the Jewish and Arab states; Israel’s glittering and
popular pavilion at the Expo in Abu Dhabi, the Israel-UAE Business
Forum, and Jewish tourists in the tens of thousands flocking to the
Emirates, these accords — as we have already seen — have been and will be used as leverage against Israel to buttress and promote the “Palestinian cause.”
The Palestinian cause for a Palestinian state. This is the one
constant, from the UN Partition Plan of 1947, through every war and
terrorist action since Israel was reborn, to every peace promotion after
1967 — Camp David in 1978 through the Oslo Agreement in 1993, to the
“Road Map to Peace” and into the “Two State Solution.” It is the
decided-upon purpose of the nations that the Jews’ presence be removed
from the Mountains of Israel — an act of internationally-sanctioned
ethnic cleansing — and that Palestine be born there.
It is the central thing — and we cannot get away from it. Count the
number of nations opposing this Two State Solution — there are none —
and it is clear that the entire international community is out to rob
the Jews of half of what they have of their ancestral homeland, and hand
it to the Arabs who already have 22 states of their own.
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