An Old Middle East Peace Plan Dead on Arrival. Again.
Hamas terror attack sinks a Middle East peace plan, and not for the first time. Biden thinks replacing Netanyahu is a solution.
The United States and Saudi Arabia are pushing Israel to revive an old and dormant peace plan that would see Saudi Arabia and other Arab oil states recognize Israel in return for concrete moves toward creation of a Palestinian state.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other high-ranking American diplomats have in recent weeks visited Israel and Arab capitals to push the initiative. Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, Princess Reema bint Bandar, even pitched the proposal to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, held last week.
The diplomatic offensive highlights the urgency of US President Joe Biden and Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, to end the Gaza war. Efforts to date, however, have failed by any and all measures.
Biden is trying to combine careful domestic political calculations as well as geopolitical ones. He is eager to prevent the Gaza war from morphing into a regional conflagration. Since early in the Gaza war, Israel and Lebanon continue to exchange regular missile and drone attacks across their border.
In a later entry, the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen has fired missiles and armed drones at international commercial ships in the Red Sea, the gateway to the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean Sea. The attacks represent a challenge to America’s status as a world power, including its self-declared role as protector of global trade routes.
It all factors into Biden’s campaign for reelection as Democratic Party nominee this November, when it appears likely he’ll run against firmer President Donald Trump, the presumed Republican Party candidate. If Biden keeps the Red Sea open and can also forge prospects detente between Israel, the Saudis and other Arab states, he could portray as a decisive leader with a major peace accomplishment, a contrast to his oversight of US involvement in the grinding and longer-than-expected war in Ukraine.
For bin Salman, a peace deal would open the way to fulfill two key foreign policy goals: One, to get US security guarantees against possible military threats from Iran; and two, to insulate himself from American criticism of his autocratic rule. Biden, in the wake of the 2018 killing of a Saudi dissident journalist in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate, had called Riyadh’s leaders “pariahs.”
If history is any guide, the peace plan faces an uphill journey, despite the presumed benefits for its sponsors. The plan recalls a similar Saudi-led proposal broached in 2002 and repeated in 2007 and 2017.
In each case, the Saudis offered peace between Arab states and Israel in exchange for the return of Israel-occupied land. Each effort fell victim to Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, especially involving attacks by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic faction that ignited the current war.
This conflict is more brutal than any previous Israeli-Palestinian wars. Hamas sparked it with the October 7, 2023, attack on civilians inside Israel that took about 1,200 lives. The assault included rapes of women and the killing of children, according to credible reports.
Israel retaliated with massive bombing of Gaza towns and with a ground offensive designed to destroy Hamas militarily and politically. Palestinian Health officials have put the related death toll at over 23,000.
A key obstacle to US-led peace efforts is the Israeli government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a political career out of opposing the so-called “two-state” solution that aims to create a Palestinian state. Far-right members of his right-wing ruling coalition oppose it and have threatened to bring down Netanyahu if he flip-flops in favor.
Members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, which excludes his government’s most virulent opponents of Palestinian statehood, are also cool to the two-state idea. War cabinet minister Benny Gantz, in public remarks on the issue he made early last year, spoke only of the creation of some sort of a “Palestinian entity.” But this year on Wednesday, January 24, he took a public swipe at Netanyahu for blaming the press and not his own failings for the current crisis.
“The responsibility is solely ours,” he said. Gantz is among Israeli officials with whom US officials have spoken about negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state.
Hamas has been silent on US-Saudi diplomacy. The Palestinian National Authority, a Hamas rival that governs part of the West Bank, supports the two-state option but has not remarked directly about communications with Biden or the Saudis on the subject.
Expert observers are skeptical. “I must say, I sometimes ask myself what the administration is smoking,” said Chuck Frielich, a former Israeli deputy security advisor and current researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “Not just that we need a two-state solution, but that it is a viable option. Everything I know says it isn’t.”
Hussein Ibish, a researcher at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, added, “Most Arab leaders are extremely skeptical about US plans. There are real doubts about the US ability to restrain Israel.”
What are key parties doing now to push their positions?
Reports from Washington say that Biden is “looking past” Netanyahu in hopes a future cabinet would replace him and accede to US efforts to begin talks on a Palestinian state. That decision followed Blinken’s met with Netanyahu a week ago during which he told him that Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Arab countries would all help reconstruct Gaza if Netanyahu agreed to future talks on the issue.
Time may not be on Biden’s side. For the moment he is the underdog versus Trump in the November election. The ex-president may not have warm feelings toward Netanyahu but throughout his 2016-2020 term he ignored the Palestinian issue by focussing on getting Arab countries to recognize the Jewish State.
In any event, Netanyahu dismissed Blinken’s entreaties, according to the officials. Instead, Netanyahu insists talks on the future of Gaza, and by extension, the West Bank, must await war’s end. Netanyahu insists that neither the Palestinian National Authority nor Hamas be involved in post-war Palestinian governance, which in any event must not include formal statehood.
Netanyahu’s main tool for resisting US pressure is continuation of the war itself, which he says won’t be over until years-end, at the earliest. That would take talks, if any, beyond the US elections.
His ministers have also pledged to hunt down Hamas officials outside of Gaza. It is probably an open-ended threat; it took two decades to find and kill Palestinian militants in Europe and the Middle East involved in the deaths of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic games. The Palestinians were killed not only in the Middle East but also Europe.
It’s unlikely talks could credibly proceed while Israeli assassination squads are on the hunt for presumed Hamas killers and leaders.
Bin Salman is working off a different set of calculations. As much as he would welcome an American security umbrella to deter an increasingly bellicose Iran, he is resisting entering into an accord with Israel unless there is a “path,” as his ambassador to Washington put it, toward a Palestinian state.
The region’s history is littered with unsuccessful pan-Middle East peace proposals. And due to targeted Hamas violence, this is not the first time that a Saudi-led peace offering was undone before it got off the ground. In 2002, the first time Saudi Arabia and other Arab states jointly offered Israel a comprehensive peace accord, Hamas aimed bloodshed at Israeli civilians.
On March 27, 2002, Arab countries met in Beirut and offered to “consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over, sign a peace agreement with Israel, and achieve peace for all states in the region.” As part of the deal, they demanded the return of territories abutting Israel that were occupied since 1967, i.e. the Gaza Strip and West Bank to the Palestinians and the Golan Heights, land north of the Sea of Galilee, to Syria. Arrangements for Palestinian refugees displaced by post-World War II Arab-Israeli wars would be negotiated.
The same day the offer was announced, a Hamas killer, who traveled from Gaza north to the coastal town of Netanya, entered a hotel and detonated a bomb. The explosion killed 30 Israelis who were sitting down to communal a dinner during Passover.
Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder who lived in Gaza at the time, said the suicide attack sent “a message to the Arab summit to confirm that the Palestinian people continue to struggle for the land and to defend themselves no matter what measures the enemy takes.”
Instead of last October’s attack, Hamas had originally planned a rifle assault a few months earlier, for Passover in April. But organizers suddenly feared Israeli intelligence officials knew of the April plot. Instead, the group rescheduled it for the holiday called Simchat Torah, an Israeli television news program reported.
Unlike the boastful message broadcast after the 2002 killings, this time, Hamas tried to excuse the civilian carnage: “If there was any case of targeting civilians, it happened accidentally and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces,” Hamas said in a statement.
Good reporting, as always.
Missing is any analysis of what happened in a court far away from the USA and Israel, but which will, over time, have a massive impact. The Hague's decision today to order Israel to prevent genocide, including measures on the battlefield and against public incitement to genocide, and to take "immediate and effective measures" to enable the provision of aid to people in Gaza, and report on its compliance to the court within one month, all of which is legally binding, will see Israel in the dock for years to come, and, America's litigiousness stymying DC's most powerful lobby, will change US policy. It will give licence for many other states and powerful groups around the world to go further, with BDS and other anti-Israel actions.
Saudi has other options, especially with the more appealing PRC. The Arab Street has been emboldened by this war, and MBS and other Gulf rulers will give in to much of its anti-Jewish sentiment, while cracking down on any remaining dissent, all of which would be fine by China but decried by the liberal West.
Israel has comprehensively lost this war, and has left a scar that will be worn like a badge of honour by its opponents for decades to come. At some time in the near future, we will know how many hostages have been killed not by Hamas but by Israeli arms, and that will have an immediate backlash on the Netanyahu government, the USA (and the West) and any negotiations discussed in this column.
Not gonna happen