THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Biden Is Weighing a Big Middle East Deal

[applegrove]

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Biden Is Weighing a Big Middle East Deal
July 27, 2023

By Thomas L. Friedman, Opinion Columnist

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/opinion/israel-saudi-arabia-biden.html

"SNIP........

After discussions in the past few days among Biden; his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan; Secretary of State Antony Blinken; and Brett McGurk, the top White House official handling Middle East policy, Biden has dispatched Sullivan and McGurk to Saudi Arabia, where they arrived Thursday morning, to explore the possibility of some kind of U.S.-Saudi-Israeli-Palestinian understanding.

The president still has not made up his mind whether to proceed, but he gave a green light for his team to probe with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to see if some kind of deal is possible and at what price. Closing such a multinational deal would be time-consuming, difficult and complex, even if Biden decides to take it to the next level right away. But the exploratory talks are moving ahead now — faster than I thought — and they’re important for two reasons.

First, a U.S.-Saudi security pact that produces normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and the Jewish state — while curtailing Saudi-China relations — would be a game changer for the Middle East, bigger than the Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Because peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the custodian of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, would open the way for peace between Israel and the whole Muslim world, including giant countries like Indonesia and maybe even Pakistan. It would be a significant Biden foreign policy legacy.

Second, if the United States forges a security alliance with Saudi Arabia — on the conditions that it normalize relations with Israel and that Israel make meaningful concessions to the Palestinians — Netanyahu’s ruling coalition of Jewish supremacists and religious extremists would have to answer this question: You can annex the West Bank, or you can have peace with Saudi Arabia and the whole Muslim world, but you can’t have both, so which will it be?

........SNIP"

[regnaD kciN]

1. Here we go again...

It was, I believe, back in the Dubya administration when Friedman sent up his own cunning plan for bringing peace to the Middle East once and for all: that the Saudis should offer full recognition of and relations with Israel, in exchange for implementation of the two-state solution. His only regret was his sense that the Saudis lacked the foresight and courage to offer such a plan, because, if they did, “how could Israel possibly refuse?”

Within six months, the Saudis offered precisely this proposal. And Israel refused.

So, when Friedman now waxes poetic about Israel being told “You can annex the West Bank, or you can have peace with Saudi Arabia and the whole Muslim world, but you can’t have both, so which will it be?”…is there even the slightest question which it will be?

[FBaggins]

5. You say there's little doubt how Israel would respond

There’s also a huge question of how Friedman thinks that the Saudis could ever deliver “peace with the whole Muslim world” when they’re barely speaking to Iran and were just at war with them themselves?

[Israeli]

6. none of this makes any sense

dont they know who they are dealing with ???

Not a hope in hell with this Gov .

You can annex the West Bank, or you can have peace with Saudi Arabia and the whole Muslim world, but you can’t have both, so which will it be?

They are already planning to annex the West Bank !!!!!

While Israelis were in the streets, Smotrich unveiled his annexation plans

As protests escalated last week over the judicial overhaul, Israel's finance minister declared the end of the Oslo Accords in all but name.
By Roni Pelli July 27, 2023

Bezalel Smotrich is a polished political strategist who knew how to avoid the mistake made by his coalition colleague, Justice Minister Yariv Levin. Unlike Levin, Smotrich, who is both Israel’s finance minister and head of the Defense Ministry’s new Settlements Administration — which grants him enforcement powers over Palestinian construction, settlement planning, and land allocation in the West Bank — did not call a press conference to announce a massive judicial overhaul that has faced widespread resistance by large swathes of the Israeli public.

Nor did he proclaim, in his most militant tone, that he would be crushing Israeli democracy. Smotrich seems to understand that effective action, particularly when it comes to the settlement enterprise, is done quietly and behind the scenes.

Last Wednesday, during a discussion in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he unveiled his annexing revolution in the occupied West Bank. As he was doing this, his friend, MK Simcha Rothman, was leading a tempestuous and highly-publicized discussion in the Constitution Committee on the controversial reasonableness clause, just a few days before it passed in the Knesset.

snip

Thus, when the public’s attention was focused on Rothman’s judicial revolution just two meeting rooms away, Smotrich announced his plan to annex the entire West Bank without granting civil status to the Palestinian residents in the area, as well as the cancellation of key parts of the Oslo Accords. This revolution will not be anchored in law. It will be submitted to the cabinet in about a month, after which it will be approved by the defense minister and the prime minister, the latter of which, according to Smotrich, is very involved in and committed to it.

Source : https://www.972mag.com/bezalel-smotrich-annexation-revolution/

[rubbersole]

2. I don't trust Friedman as far as I can throw him.

I hope Biden does work towards middle east peace. His group is smart/savvy enough to pull something together.

[applegrove]

3. +11

[SleeplessinSoCal]

4. Israelis are in the streets because Bibi is power mad.

And his extreme right position on Palestine is going to require some sort of blackmail, or some strategy we are clueless about.