Outside-In Won't Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

December 6, 2017 Topic: Israel Palestinian Territories Saudi Arabia Region: Middle East Blog Brand: Paul Pillar

Outside-In Won't Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

What the Trump administration is doing, in concert with the rightist Israeli government, can be interpreted as just another episode in stringing along a “peace process” while Israel unilaterally establishes still more facts on the ground that are difficult to reverse.  It is that, but there probably also is some self-delusion involved, especially when coupled with the inexperience of Kushner and MbS.  Sometimes when a rhetorical theme is repeated as often and for as many purposes as the drumbeat of Iran, Iran, Iran has been repeated, the drummers start to believe their own rhetoric.

In his public remarks the other day, Kushner asserted, “Israel is a much more natural ally today than they were 20 years ago because of Iran and ISIS extremism.”  No, it isn’t.  The growing intolerance in a state defined by religious and ethnic discrimination, with the cementing of a system of apartheid with a large subjugated population lacking political and civil rights, has made Israel even less of a natural ally of the United States over the past 20 years.  As for Iran, Netanyahu’s political exploitation of that issue in a way that goes, with respect to the biggest Iran development in recent years—the agreement that restricts Iran’s nuclear program—against even Israel's own security interests reflects how big the gap has become between Netanyahu’s policies and U.S. interests.

Saudi Arabia always has had interests significantly different from those of the United States, notwithstanding mutually beneficial cooperative arrangements involving oil and security.  The differences have become even greater with the rise of a young prince preoccupied with his internal power and his troubled campaign to claim regional dominance.

By hitching his Middle East policy to these two wagons in the vain hope that Palestinians can be browbeaten into permanent subjugation, Donald Trump is doing no favors either to U.S. interests or to the cause of Middle Eastern peace. 

Image: Pro-Palestine protesters march towards the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia December 8, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer